DOCTOR Who and The Thick Of It star Peter Capaldi has paid tribute to his producer and actress wife Elaine Collins as he revealed she took a job to let him pursue his unpredictable acting career when they both struggled financially.
The 66 year old from Glasgow, who stars in the new series of Black Mirror, is notoriously private about his marriage, but wanted it noted that Lanarkshire born Elaine, also 66, gave him the financial freedom he needed to choose his roles.
Elaine made her acting debut in 1975 in series Lord Peter Wimsey before movies including Soft Top Hard Shoulder, Mrs Brown and The Wyvern Mystery as well as TV shows City Lights, Selling Hitler and Psychos.
Since the 2000s, she has worked as associate producer on drama film Strictly Sinatra, as well as being a script editor on detective series A Touch of Frost and creative director on shows like Shetland.
Now living in London, the couple met in 1983 working for Paines Plough Theatre Company, and married in 1991. They have a daughter born in 1992 and two grandsons.
Peter says without Elaine his acting career in movies like Local Hero and Dangerous Liaisons wouldn’t ever have been possible.
He explained: “Elaine really changed my life. She's an incredible woman, amazing mother and producer and actress and all of these things. I don't want to go into it in huge detail because I also have a private life but she's the person who changed everything for me because she took me in at a time when I wasn't in great shape, and loved me. Ironically for someone who's had such an embarrassment of riches, great luck and good fortune, I developed quite a kind of lack of confidence, applying limitations to myself that were not necessary, when I was probably about 26, 27.”
“People think the first automatic characteristic of an actor would be that they were full of confidence. I know many actors who are genuinely insecure because the business is so volatile and you can be ditched by it very quickly. And you have no control over it. One of the things that happened to me was that I decided that I wasn't really very clever or very smart or that I should limit my ambition.”
Peter who said he suffered a type of ‘imposter syndrome’ at the time added: “She began to say to me, ‘No you must think more of yourself. You must work harder and take bigger risks and read more.’”
“It's funny, because people come in to our house, and say, ‘Oh, you're so well read, Peter’.And I say, ‘That's not my books, they're Elaine’s.’ And of course, during one of my down periods, which went on for quite a while, we were really struggling financially. But she decided when we had a particularly difficult year, and I wasn't bringing in any money, that she had to do something. And she asked around and got a job through the BBC reading scripts“
“…So she would read scripts and she'd get paid. I don't know how much, 25 quid or something like that. Elaine took it very seriously and also was very fast so began to earn more money.
“And the BBC noticed and said ‘This person is really good at doing this. Shall we invite her to apply for a job as a drama assistant?’ That was really a job that largely someone who had just come from Oxford or Cambridge would normally get.
And she applied, she got the job.”
“Although that wasn't a lot of money, it was a regular wage and it allowed me to say, ‘Okay, well, I don't have to do this job or that job. I can make a choice about which one I think is artier or better or a job that would help me more.’
It gave me the power of veto.”
Elaine has since produced long running detective series including Vera and Shetland.
Peter told podcast Three People: “What an achievement. And now finally, she does a show that I'm in called Criminal Record, with Apple, which has just been commissioned for a second series. So she just made our life happen.”
“She made me seek and make more of myself and also made so much of herself and brought up our family and made our beautiful home and also produced these shows. I'm just in awe of her. It's the greatest.”
