The actress, 47, talks to Hattie Crisell about why she doesn’t mind being cast as ‘complicated mothers’, the wacky wellness movement and the biggest twist on the hit TV show yet

To the likes of you, me and anybody else who enjoys a bit of British TV drama, Keeley Hawes is so familiar as to be practically family. She is almost 25 years into her acting career: we’ve watched her stride fiercely down corridors (Bodyguard); glide cheerfully around the Greek countryside (The Durrells); and brim with exquisitely repressed anger (Stonehouse). To her actual family, however — as I gather when I interview her — Hawes is just a mum who sometimes has to do calls with journalists.

She is at home in southwest London, and we have been going for a few minutes when her son pops into the room, somewhere off camera. “Hi Ralph — I’m just on a Zoom,” she says. “Oh, sorry,” he says politely and then, with the unselfconsciousness of a busy 16-year-old, fills her in on his plans for the day. Does she want a bagel? She declines, and starts to laugh. “Sorry — Easter holidays,” she tells me.

Ralph and Maggie, 18, are Hawes’s two children with fellow actor Matthew Macfadyen — currently starring as the hilariously venal Tom Wambsgans in the final season of Succession. They’ve been married since November 2004, having met on the set of the BBC drama Spooks, and she also has Myles, 22, from a previous marriage. The family is completed by a chestnut poodle, Buster, who has just returned from the groomer. He appears briefly on camera too, moon-eyed and professionally fluffed. “He’s a glorious boy,” says Hawes proudly. “He’s the light of our lives.”

She and Macfadyen will celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary next year. “We laugh a lot,” she says of the secret to their staying power. And she positively cackles when I ask whether she knew before the rest of us about Succession’s recent bombshell — the death of patriarch Logan Roy. “Yes I did! I did. That was a very hard secret to keep.”

The cast of Succession were informed on a Zoom call, she says, “and I was locked out of the room”. Then she confesses: “But I did loiter around a bit outside.”

At 47, Hawes is at the top of her professional game. In the past year alone, we’ve seen her in Sky’s The Midwich Cuckoos, the BBC’s Crossfire (produced by her own company, Buddy Club Productions) and ITV’s Stonehouse, in which she played Barbara, wife of disgraced politician John Stonehouse, who was played by Macfadyen (“a joy” to work with).

She also had a key role in the previous year’s much-lauded It’s a Sin, about the Aids crisis. It made her pointedly aware of her longevity in the business, she explains. “I was working with a whole group of young actors who said, ‘We’ve grown up with you on screen’ — I’ve got to that point,” she says wryly. “And it’s deeply flattering, actually. It sounds really naff, but I do feel so lucky to be working.”

Inevitably at her age, she adds, she’s now often cast as “the mother” — which is fine, so long as the characters are interesting. In It’s a Sin, she played Valerie, a buttoned-up, unhappy woman in denial about her son’s homosexuality. “That was a great example of a very complicated mother,” she says. “It doesn’t get any more difficult than that, and it was a real highlight of my career.”

It’s not traditionally an easy industry for a middle-aged woman. It wasn’t long ago that actresses in their forties were being cast as the mothers of actors the same age as them. “They still are!” she interjects. “I mean, it is getting better, undoubtedly — but there is still a way to go.” When I ask if she’s felt pressured to look young, she turns the focus back to herself. “I think part of the pressure that I’ve felt has come from me,” she says. “I’m watching myself change, I’m watching myself on screen getting older. So none of that helps.”

If we want to understand actors’ complicated relationship with their faces, she suggests, just think of the Zoom effect of the pandemic. Many of us were horrified when, during lockdown, we had to watch ourselves on screen during every social interaction — it reportedly led to a boom for practitioners of Botox and cosmetic surgery. As it happens, I am suffering with this while we talk, looking at my sallow journalist face alongside that of a woman chosen to represent a skincare brand.

The ambassador for Boots No7’s much-hyped new skincare range, Future Renew, Hawes has history with the brand, having also been the face of its famous Protect & Perfect anti-ageing serum when it launched in 2007. “Somebody said it was 16 years ago that I did that, which I’m finding hard to believe,” she says, widening her eyes in comic horror at this passing of time.

“When you’re on a job for six months, you’ve got no choice but to spend a ridiculous amount of time in front of a mirror,” she adds. “You see yourself first thing in the morning, and sometimes you’re sitting there for two hours. And you know, it’s fun, and you’re creating a character — but actually, you’re doing something unnatural by staring at your own reflection. Of course you’ll start to find things wrong with it. So I take that quite seriously and I try to find distractions, while make-up artists do their job.”

Her other strategies for looking after herself seem pretty normal — I listen in the hopes of some weird example of celebrity woo-woo, but none come. “I’m 47, so I’m getting headaches and feeling a bit out of sorts sometimes — but actually, it makes a big difference if you remember to drink a lot of water,” she says.

She has just done her first reformer Pilates class, which involves exercising on a machine loaded with springs, a sliding carriage, ropes and pulleys, that can look quite intimidating to the uninitiated. “Well, that’s what I thought,” she nods. “I thought, ‘I’m going to get caught up in a tangled mess here and turn into a meme’ — but actually, it was great. I’ve tried boxing before, and I quite like that, because it’s an exercise where you’re thinking about something, so you’re not thinking about the exercise. So yeah, I’m making an effort to look after myself.”

No mention of charcoal smoothies or cervical steaming, then, although she seems fascinated by the wacky wellness movement. “I love reading about what Gwyneth is telling me to do,” she confides. “And I watched her court case. I love a bit of Gwyneth.”

She and Macfadyen are now in the final push of parenting, but she seems to have no worries about an impending empty nest. “I’ve just been on holiday with all three of the children,” she says, smiling. “What happens in this phase is that they go away — but then they realise that they’ll have better holidays with you than they’re going to get anywhere else, so they come back. So that’s good, and we all get along very well. The idea of them leaving home is tricky, but it doesn’t happen overnight.”

Anyway, she has a fluffy insurance plan: “They’ll never really leave home — because they’ll want to come back and see Buster.”

Keeley Hawes’s perfect weekend

Lark or owl?
Lark! I panic if I’m not headed to bed by 10pm

Green juice or red wine?
Neither. If it’s wine it’s white

Pilates or personal trainer?
I started reformer Pilates this week. So, I’ll let you know

Make-up or bare face?
I love the freedom of wearing no make-up, it’s liberating

Signature dish?
Probably a tuna melt — on sourdough, with sriracha, capers, mayo, sweetcorn and slices of proper cheddar on top

I can’t get the weekend without…
Switching off with a walk with our poodle, Buster