Ross Kemp has reprised his role as Grant Mitchell in EastEnders, but the actor tends to keep his real personal life away from the BBC soap. The 61-year-old made his debut as Grant Mitchell in February 1990 and has long been considered one of Albert Square's greatest icons. Here is everything we know about the celebrated actor and presenter's private family life away from all the Mitchell mayhem.
Ross Kemp's Famous Ex-Wife
During the late 1990s, Ross was a well-known face on EastEnders when he began a relationship with journalist Rebekah Wade, who worked for the now-defunct News of the World. The pair met at a golf tournament and got engaged in 1996, before briefly parting ways in 1997 due to work pressures. They soon rekindled their romance and, in June 2002, tied the knot in Las Vegas, though their marriage ran into difficulties just a year later.
Rebekah described their union as a rollercoaster and confessed to having an affair with a colleague before they split in 2006 and finally divorced in 2009. That very same year, Rebekah went on to wed racehorse trainer Charlie Brooks. Reflecting on her separation from Ross, she said: "I think we were both working incredibly long hours in completely different industries. The whole relationship was a bit of a roller coaster. Sometimes it was really good, and sometimes it wasn't. I think that's how he would describe it." Following their split, Ross welcomed his first child, a son called Oliver, in 2010 with his then-partner, makeup artist Nicole Coleman.
Who Is Ross Kemp Married To?
In 2012, Ross wed his second wife, Australian-born Renee O'Brien, and the couple remains happily together to this day. They share three children: a son, Leo, born in 2015, and twins Ava and Kitty, born in 2017. The family prefers to keep their private life out of the spotlight, and little is publicly known about Renee, though Ross has occasionally spoken about his wife.
He told Metro Online: "I think my wife didn't really know me from my soap days. So when we first got together, she just thought I was some kind of grumpy old bald bloke in a bar – and she's probably right about that today, I'm still a grumpy old bald bloke in a bar." Opening up further during an appearance on the Plot Twist podcast in 2022, he shed more light on the secret behind his enduring marriage. "Renee's pretty practical, she's Australian, she's a lawyer, she's very straight. She'd never seen EastEnders. She had no idea I was Grant Mitchell or anything like that, and she didn't really understand that I was doing documentaries," Ross explained.
He also disclosed how he had behaved badly in the early stages of their relationship, but Renee straightened him out. "I'd just come back from when I first met her, and I generally behaved quite badly the first four or five weeks," he confessed. "I've changed now, obviously, but I used to go on a bit of a bender with some of the guys, and she sort of straightened me out. But she knows what I do and you know, there's a great saying, particularly used by mates of mine in the armed forces, which is 'quick goodbyes and long hellos'."
Chatting to the Daily Mail in 2019, Ross spoke warmly about fatherhood: "I'm very happy I've got my children and wouldn't have it any other way. I could have done it about a decade earlier though, I should've done. I was old, I was in my 40s, I was quite selfish before, in terms of you put yourself first, you look at what's going to be best for you and that totally goes out the window when you have children, you put your children way in front of everything you do."
EastEnders airs Monday to Thursday on BBC One and iPlayer.
