Felicity Kendal has opened up about her journey with grief following the death of her partner, Michael Rudman, three years ago.
Theatre director Rudman died, aged 84, in April 2023, after a series of health problems, including a heart attack, bypass surgery, hospitalisation with Covid, and breaking his back. The director required full-time carers in his home in the last two years of his life.
The Good Life star Kendal, 79, said that, instead of dwelling on her sadness, she attempts to focus on “the wonderful times rather than the sad” and doesn’t want to waste her time as “life is so precious”.
She said she has a support network, which she calls “very important”, telling Prima Magazine of her grief: “I mean it has been three years now, so it’s moved from being really all-consuming.”
Kendal continued: “Even though you try not to show it, it sort of takes over every aspect of your life – missing that person that was part of your everyday. So the everyday changes.”
The actor, who said Rudman “was so loved by everybody”, said the first year of grief led to her asking: "What do I put in place because I’m not the same person any more?”
“You think, ‘I’m of less value because I’ve only got half of me’ and then you realise you have a chance now at another life and you have to have a different routine.”
She said that, when her sister died, the thought that helped her was: “she’s not here, so I better not waste this” – and Kendal said she’s having similar feelings about Rudman.
“I think that’s what I’m now feeling. And it’s just about remembering the wonderful times rather than the sad times and that does happen. It’s a three-year journey.”
Kendal married Rudman in 1983, but the pair divorced in 1991 following a series of marital problems. She began a relationship with playwright Tom Stoppard, but she reunited with Rudman eight years later.
The couple never remarried but had lived together ever since. They have a 39-year-old son named Jacob.
In 2023, Kendal said she “cried a lot” after Rudman’s death, “which is quite unlike me”.
“When someone dies, it’s like a boomerang,” she told The Times. “The emotion is gone, out of sight, then whack – it hits you again. Unexpected things get me. Often, it is just people being nice or someone else dying. I am at an age when an awful lot of people are dying.”
The actor also said she “hates” it when people say she’s “lost” her husband.
“It’s as if you have lost the cat. I haven’t lost Michael; he is dead. We are all at one point or another going to have to deal with similar things, so let’s be open about it.”
