Brenda Blethyn husband: Michael ‘disappeared’ during unusual proposal to Vera star | Celebrity News | Showbiz & TV

Much–loved British actress Brenda celebrates her 75th birthday today. Born in Ramsgate, Kent, as the youngest of nine children in a Roman catholic, working class-family, she has made a remarkable career for herself. Having initially trained at technical college and worked as a stenographer and bookkeeper for a bank, she decided to turn her hobby of amateur dramatics into a career after the breakdown or her first marriage to Alan James Blethyn.

She moved into the London theatre scene in the mid-Seventies, before moving into TV and film.

She made her TV debut in Mike Leight’s Grown-Ups in 1980, and has since starred in an abundance of roles, winning a Golden Globe, a BAFTA and a Cannes Film Festival Award along the way.

More recently, she has become best known for playing the title role of DCI Vera Stanhope in crime drama series Vera.

Her personal and professional life both changed dramatically in the mid-Seventies, long before she shot to stardom.

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Brenda met Michael Mayhem, a director at the National Theatre, and he has been her partner since 1975.

They eventually married in June 2010, something Brenda opened up on in a 2016 interview with the Daily Mail.

Asked who her best kiss had been, she immediately replied: “From my husband, Michael Mayhew.

“I was besotted with him when we first met at the National Theatre. I was at the bar and I heard him say, ‘Are you hungry?’, but he wasn’t looking at me but the barmaid.

“I looked away. He said, ‘Well, are you?’, and I realised he was talking to me after all.

“After we’d been together for 35 years he proposed to me on Skype.

“I was away — either in France or in Newcastle. It was great — I told him to get down on one knee and he disappeared off the screen.”

Brenda met Michael after her first husband left. Speaking to The Guardian in 2013, she said he “just fell for someone else”.

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She added: “I was devastated when he left, but he really was a lovely fella — and the other lady is nice too. It was just one of those things.”

Brenda and Michael do not have any children. Asked if it is something she regrets, she said ‘no’ but admitted it is something she ponders from time to time.

Their relationship blossomed from early on, though it took the small matter of 35 years before he popped the question.

Brenda explained in an interview with the Radio Times: “We were getting on a bit and it seemed the sensible thing to do.

“Neither of us were going anywhere so it just presents a problem if one of us pops our clogs.”

Brenda opened up on other aspects of her personal life in the same interview with the Daily Mail. She revealed she has run the London Marathon three times, and “hated every minute” of training each time.

Asked how she likes to relax, she said: “I love puzzles and crosswords. I print them out to take in to members of the crew at work.

“I do the cryptic one in about half an hour, which some people would think is a snail’s pace. The fastest I’ve done the concise one is three minutes.”

Her work is something she addressed just last month. Vera returned for an 11th series earlier this year.

Filmed in the Northumberland countryside, the cast are sometimes subjected to foul weather, often tempting Brenda to throw in the towel.

She revealed: “I’m generally the warmest one on set but the long, freezing shots do take their toll.

“I come home and say, ‘Never again! Where’s me slippers?’. But I miss Vera. I miss the cast and so I hope it’ll come around again.”