Let’s be clear — Cold Feet star Hermione Norris hasn’t got much interest in the menopause.
In fact she says the "whole biological fact of menopause is quite boring". But, aged 59 and having come out the other side of this stage in life, the actress has felt a certain shift in her outlook, a wisdom if you will, that she is keen to pass on to her daughter, Hero, 18.
“In your first act your life is about ‘I would like to be an actor, I would like to get married. I would like to have children. I would like to travel.’ It's all exterior achievements or attainments or experiences which are wonderful and incredible and huge blessings,” the actress tells Ateh Jewel in this week’s Second Act podcast. “But, when you get older, it starts becoming an internal journey, which is the most enriching and the most incredible thing hearing women speak about that in their stories and hearing conversations between women.
She adds: “The biological fact of menopause is quite boring. But what happens is, it’s sort of alchemical to you when you've gone through menopause?
“It's not literally like a personality change. It's like, I am not who I was ten years ago and I really like it.
“All the masks drop, don't they? All those roles, all those masks, all those illusions, all that nonsense that we said as women, you just go, ‘oh my God, I was buying into that!'," she says of the rhetoric that women had to stay looking younger, or follow a certain traditional path.
“We were fed some nonsense. I hear young women now with a vocabulary that just wasn't available to us, was it? And I think that is amazing that there's going to be a generation who who won't confirm and will say ‘no, thank you very much. That's not for me. I'm not going to do that.’
Menopause epiphany
The main epiphany the actress, who is starring in Pilgrimage on BBC2, experienced throughout the menopause was ‘to be true to yourself.’
“You realise that the only true hurt is when you haven't stood up for yourself, when you haven't been loving and kind and respectful to yourself, that you've allowed yourself to be treated badly, or you've allowed somebody or tried to be something for somebody that wasn't good enough.
“So always be true to yourself and trust that. Really trust that”
Hermione’s children Wilf, 21 and Hero, 18, were still at primary school when she started going through the menopause. She was 41 when she had her youngest daughter, having almost given up on meeting ‘the one’ in her 30s. It had been a surprise to her when she clapped eyes on her future husband, screenwriter Simon Wheeler, on the set of Wire In The Blood after returning from a stint filming Cold Feet in Australia.
Their relationship, she says ‘is built on friendship’ and she is suspicious of those acquaintances who flaunt their passionate relationships in their second act.
© Dan Kitwood/Getty Images“He didn't try and mould me in any way, shape or form. I was absolutely able to be who I was,” she says of Simon.
“He's my best friend. I never understand and I'm always slightly suspicious of people that say they are madly in love, especially at my age.
“I say I just want the very, very best for him. It is a real, deep grounded love and friendship. It should be 'who do you want to go home with?' and not 'who do you want to go out with?',” she adds.
Pilgrimage: The Road to Holy Island, Sunday 5 - Tuesday 7 April at 9pm on BBC Two. Stream all episodes on BBC iPlayer from Sunday 5 April.
Listen to the Second Act podcast, now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts and Youtube.
