As one of Britain's best-loved actresses, Caroline Quentin has lit up TV screens for decades in shows such as Men Behaving Badly and Jonathan Creek. Starring on stage and balancing motherhood was the life Caroline, 65, knew best. Yet when the pandemic struck in 2020 and the play she was starring in was put on hold, another side of her blossomed.
"I hadn't spent enough time at home for the first act of my life," she tells Ateh Jewel on the latest episode of the HELLO! Second Act podcast. "I suddenly had all the things I wanted…to spend time in my garden, do more painting, to write. But I was a bit lonesome."
It was a suggestion by her son William, 22, who she shares with her husband Sam Farmer, along with her 26-year-old actress daughter Rose, that saw a new world open up to Caroline. "He said, 'You should go on Instagram' and it changed my life."
And so CQ Gardens, an account where Caroline shares her personal gardening journey, was born. "Within a very short space of time, I had 200,000 followers going, ‘'How do you grow your marigolds? What are you doing in your greenhouse?'"
It led to Caroline writing and illustrating a bestselling book, Drawn to the Garden. "It literally turned my life around and made me feel I had agency over what I was doing, which I don't think I'd ever had before."
Caroline's first act
The Surrey-born star started performing at a young age and learnt to dance when she was "tiny". At 16, she joined the Les Misérables cast as a chorus girl. Her home life was turbulent. Her parents split when she was 14 and her mother was unwell. She recalls: "My mother's mental health wasn’t great – they call it bipolar now. It was difficult for all of us in the family. Learning to look at that, cope with it and live in a different way is my joy now."
© ITV/ShutterstockCaroline met her husband Sam, who is 12 years her junior, in 1999 when he was a runner on a TV show she was working on. "He said, 'Good morning, Miss Quentin. Can I get you any breakfast?' I thought, 'You can get me something!' Their courtship was short-lived: "I was pregnant within two months of meeting Sam, so we didn't have a lot of dating time. Suddenly, now we do."
Now enjoying her second act, Caroline's advice is: "Be brave enough to say 'no'. Be brave enough to go for the things you really want to go for."
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