Actor Kris Marshall has been a firm fixture on our television screens since he was cast in the beloved comedy series My Family when he was 27 years old.
More recently he has appeared as DI Humphrey Goodman in Beyond Paradise, a spin-off that has seen him reprise his role from the critically acclaimed Death and Paradise. From his unforgettable appearance in Love Actually and long-running performance in those seminal BT adverts, Kris has gone from strength to strength on-screen, but off-screen the 50-year-old father of two has been no stranger to challenges in his personal life.
These include a shock car accident that left him with a serious brain injury, which he managed to recover from and appear as scheduled in a play he had been cast in only three weeks later.
The accident took place in 2008 during a night out in Bristol city centre, per the BBC, and saw the star get hit by a car, suffering head injuries. At the time Kris was 35 years old and was admitted into Bristol's Royal Infirmary where he was treated in intensive care.
However, despite the shocking accident, Kris managed to make his West End debut just a few weeks later, appearing in the comedy Fat Pig, and the production's director and writer said of his quick recuperation, "It was pretty serious yet he bounced back incredibly quickly," adding that despite the fact that they had "feared the worst" it was "amazing" that the resilient actor had managed to get back to work in time.
In February 2012, the actor married Hanna Dodkin in a romantic snowy winter wedding, in his hometown of Wells, Somerset, in what a bystander called a "small affair" to the Daily Mail. The couple share two children - Elsie and Thomas - and started dating just two years before their wedding in 2010.
In 2014, the family moved to Bath, and the same year Kris took on the role of DI Humphrey Goodman in Death and Paradise, and despite the show and character being well received by audiences, the Caribbean based mystery show came with challenges in his personal life.
Being away from his young family was something that Kris admitted he struggled with, and the show took eight months a year to film, leaving him with huge periods of time away from Hanna and his kids - something that his wife struggled with too, as the yoga teacher was left to raise their newborn daughter solo whilst he was away working.
"It was very hard as my daughter was only three months old when I left," Kris said after he decided to exit the hit show in 2017, "In some ways, it was easier for me than my wife, as I didn’t have the sleepless nights. I got to leave all of that behind. But it was tough being away from her every day and missing her."
Kris added that whilst he had a good run on the show, he was fundamentally "bereft" being away from his family. "It all became a juggling mission. Skypeing isn’t the same and just leaves me bereft, really. Then I just had to go and drown my sorrows in the bar.
"It's time to move on and give someone else a chance to enjoy some sun. I've lived half my life in the Caribbean for the past four years. There's very few jobs where your commute to work is a five-minute walk in flip-flops."
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