Name: Keeley Clare Julia Hawes
Born on: February 10, 1976 (10/02/1976)
Hometown: Marylebone, London, England
Family: Tony Hawes (father), Brenda Hawes (mother), Matthew Macfadyen (husband), Myles McCallum (firstborn son), Maggie Macfadyen (daughter), Ralph Macfadyen (son)

Early life

Keeley Hawes was born and raised in London and found a love of acting early, enrolling in the famed Sylvia Young Theatre School, which was across the road from her house: “I started going to Sylvia Young’s theatre school at the age of nine, so I knew I enjoyed acting. But I wasn’t part of the acting world – the school happened to move into premises across from my house at a time when I was really enjoying being in the primary school play. If they hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t have gone to that school.”

Speaking about growing up in the capital, Keeley told The Guardian: “Just the idea of your children going out and playing out and coming in when it’s dark, that just doesn’t happen. The idea of doing it in central London seems even more heightened and scary. But no, it was fantastic. It makes you quite bold, growing up. It makes you not afraid of anything. I loved it.”

She studied there from the age of 9 to 16, and, after being spotted by a scout, Keeley did some modelling, and featured in at least four music videos, for the singles Saturday Night by Suede, Marvellous by The Lightning Seeds, Come Around by The Mutton Birds, and She’s a Star by James: “I was scouted in the street by a model agency. It took me by complete surprise, I had no idea such things existed. But actually, I had a lovely six months making friends and travelling, though I wasn’t the greatest model.”

After that, she worked part-time jobs, bought a car and left home. At 17, she was working in the fashion department at Cosmo magazine, sorting shoes, when she got a phone call to say someone had seen her picture in an old magazine: “They invited me to audition for what turned out to be Dennis Potter’s last work, Karaoke. And I got it. There was a lot of publicity surrounding it and from there I got an agent and my career began. Suddenly, I was an adult with a proper job.”

Husband and children

Keeley has three children of her own – a son Myles with her ex husband, Spencer McCallum, a son Ralph and a daughter Maggie, with her husband Matthew Macfadyen. The couple met after starring on Spooks together. They tied the knot in November 2004, one month before Keeley gave birth to their first child.

Keeley recalled to the Evening Standard: “Matthew just came straight out with it and said, ‘I love you’ in the rain one day. I thought, oh dear, here we go.” The pair married in front of just two witnesses, their friends, at a local registry. Keeley has since told The Telegraph: “I love being married to Matthew. And I know Matthew loves being married, too. It ties everything up and it’s a statement to each other and to the world. Marriage and being a mother are absolutely crucial to my happiness and my life.”

Acting career

Keeley Hawes began her career in a number of literary adaptations, including Our Mutual Friend (1998), Wives and Daughters (1999), The Blonde Bombshell (1999), Tipping the Velvet (2002), and The Canterbury Tales (2003).

Hawes has also appeared in films, including After Thomas (2006), Death at a Funeral (2007) and High-Rise (2015), and she provided the voice of Lara Croft in a series of Tomb Raider video games from 2006-2010.

By 2008, she was starring as detective Alex Drake in the dark comedy/drama Ashes to Ashes, alongside Philip Glenister as DCI Gene Hunt, for which she won a Glamour Award.

She played leading roles in the 2010 revival of Upstairs Downstairs as Agnes, the limited series The Casual Vacancy (2015) as Samantha Mollison, The Missing (2016) as Gemma Webster, and Identity (2010) as Martha Lawson.

She also played Elizabeth I in BBC Two’s The Hollow Crown, a mini-series of Shakespeare adaptations starring Dame Judi Dench, followed by a role as a villainous banker in Doctor Who. “I was so excited because the children could finally watch me in something.”

Main roles

Louisa Durrell – The Durrells (2016 – 2019)

In comedy-drama The Durrells (2016-2019), Keeley played Louisa Durrell, mother to Gerry, Leslie, Margo and Larry. The ITV show has four series and is based on Gerald Durrell’s books detailing the family’s four years spent on Corfu. “This job is a job really like no other that I’ve done. I’ve played their mother and I’ve spent every birthday with gorgeous Milo, who plays Gerald Durrell, we’ve watched him go from a little boy to, he’s 16, he’s doing his GCSEs. All of them, I love them dearly.”

Of the stunning Greek island, Keeley added: “Corfu is so beautiful. It has become a bit of a second home. And we are all going back, not together, but separately. Partly out of habit and partly just because we love it, it’s so beautiful and the people are just such wonderful, generous people.”

Lindsay Denton – Line of Duty (2014 – 2016)

In 2015, Keeley was nominated for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for her performance in Jed Mercurio’s popular and critically acclaimed police procedural Line of Duty as DI Lindsay Denton in series 2 and 3 (2014-2016). But Keeley admitted: “Like Bodyguard, we just all turned up and did our jobs the best we could. Nobody can foresee something like that, or something like the reaction to Lindsay Denton. It just sort of lit the touch paper with people.”

Julia Montague – Bodyguard (2018)

She teamed again with Mercurio for the 2018 thriller Bodyguard in which she played Home Secretary Julia Montague opposite Richard Madden. The BBC drama, created and written by Line of Duty’s Jed Mercurio, was overwhelmingly popular and became the most-watched drama on British television.

Keeley’s role propelled her into the spotlight further, with the actress admitting on This Morning: “Usually when The Durrells is on, people will recognise me from The Durrells or Line of Duty, but I came back and it was just on another level. It was like a weird anxiety dream. And I made the terrible mistake – it was my son’s birthday and we’d booked to go to Thorpe Park, and so I walked straight into Thorpe Park at the height of Bodyguard, trapped on rides with people videoing me.”

That same year, she starred in the also critically acclaimed drama Mrs. Wilson as Dorothy Wick. In 2019 she received a double BAFTA TV awards nomination – Best Leading Actress for Bodyguard and Best Supporting Actress for Mrs. Wilson and became an executive producer in the 4th series of The Durrells, later setting up her own production company called Buddyclub.

Charity work

Hawes is also a great ambassador for charities. She supports Breast Cancer Awareness after discovering a lump on her breast at age 19, (which fortunately was not cancer). She also joined the P&G Capital Clean Up initiative to help tidy up London before the summer 2012 Olympics and regularly contributes to CHASE hospice care for children in Surrey. She has worked with UNICEF since 2012 and became an Ambassador in August 2016.

To support UNICEF she has travelled to Djibouti in 2012 to highlight the East Africa food crisis and make an appeal film for Soccer Aid; to Papua New Guinea in 2014 to support both Soccer Aid and the Glasgow Commonwealth Games; and to Jordan in 2016 to visit children and families living in the Za’atari refugee camp and host communities in Amman. Keeley also visited Calais in 2016 to meet unaccompanied refugee children who had fled Syria and made the dangerous journey alone through Europe as part of their reunification campaign.

In 2021, Keeley Hawes got behind the VaccinAid campaign to amplify, advocate and fundraise for UNICEF’s work to deliver vaccines, tests and treatments on behalf of COVAX.

“I feel very privileged to have met the people who work on the ground for Unicef, making a real difference every day to children’s lives.”

Keeley Hawes, Unicef UK Ambassador