Her life has changed completely
Miranda Hart(Image: PA)
Miranda Hart has been utterly frank when she says she’d like to keep things simple since taking a break from TV because of her long battle with Lyme disease.
The comedy actor, who was born in Torquay, is taking a five year break from the screen as her ongoing battle continues to take a real toll, says The Mirror.
“When an illness takes everything away from your life,” she said. “It rammed home to me sayings like ‘you are not what you do’ and ‘you can’t take it with you’ and all that stuff.
“It was so easy to hear. Until you are older and you are faced with suffering, you don’t realise how true that is. Now, life is pretty good. I think that’s because I’m much better at taking one day at a time.
“I think I have always strived to have a manageable life, which is in line with my values. Not to say that it doesn’t have its difficulties, but I am just not rushing around doing things that don’t mean anything to me anymore.
“It is just calm and simple.”
She added: “I just wake up and think ‘right, what am I going to do today?’ It’s walking the dog, it’s playing games with my husband, watching telly and doing a bit of writing. I find life much “free-er” and happier, because of that. It is a very simple life, which I love.”
Miranda Hart in 2015(Image: WireImage)
Miranda, 52, hid her battle with Lyme disease – a bacterial infection that can be spread to humans by infected ticks – from the public for years.
In her autobiography, ‘I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You’, she explained how the condition had been undiagnosed for 33 years.
Miranda suffered from extreme fatigue, recurrent infections, joint pain, and cognitive difficulties. It later emerged that it had been caused by a tick bite in Virginia in the USA.
The debilitating weakness was initially diagnosed as anxiety-related disorders like agoraphobia and later as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), also known as chronic fatigue syndrome.
She later became bedbound after collapsing at home while at her worst.
This was the last step towards securing a diagnosis for Lyme disease during the pandemic in 2020.
She was feeling “alone in the darkness” before the diagnosis, which came as a tremendous relief.
“Being misunderstood and misjudged is one of the hardest things about these kinds of conditions,” she said.
Now, being forced to take a step back, the former Bristol UWE student is now enjoying her life more than she ever has before.
Miranda Hart (Image: BBC)
“It was very interesting being known for playing a very jolly, playful character, which is of course part of me,” she says.
“But then collapsing with illness and not being able to be that at all. I really did feel that.
“Before I became unwell, there was that sense like you have got to be ‘on’. You have got to be that certain type of person. People expected you to be that but, of course, it was a character and a part.”
She realised during her illness that she’d been working so hard in her 20s and 30s that she’d lost a sense of joy.
“I had this full circle moment. I realised I had been writing a character whose mission is to play and to tell the adult world to play and be silly, but I was fearful the second series would not do as well as the first and I got looped into the whole success of it.
“I lost my ‘play’. I lost joy by getting serious about my work. I wish I had not been so quite stressed about the series, but you feel you have to keep going and not let yourself or the audience down,” she said.
Miranda’s last major TV work was in the January of 2020, when she marked the 10th anniversary of her BBC success ‘Miranda’, with a celebratory special named ‘Miranda: My Such Fun Celebration.’
Not only did the special mark the success of her semi-biographical series, but it also celebrated her 20-year career in TV that started in 2001 with various sitcoms.
Miranda described a “foolish” shyness when it came to acting as a youngster.
“I did know always what I wanted to do,” she says. “I had this weird moment when I was seven, looking at comedians on the television, and I was so excited by adults playing and their silliness and joy.
“I just remember saying ‘If that is a job, that is what I want to do’. I wanted to jump into the television. So I always had this dream.
“But it took me until I was 26 to want to become an actress, as I was too embarrassed and shy.
“I went to university and I should have said I wanted to go to drama school. I took off after my first year at university to go to speech and drama school, but I tore up the acceptance letter. It just breaks my heart now.
“I am sure the show Miranda would have happened anyway and I would have been randomly writing books, but I should have followed my heart when I was 20.”
She hopes that her short story novel, ‘The Christmas Tree That Wanted to Dance’, will be a Christmas hit this year.
The novel and latest in a string of books she has written is out now as she balances her new life at home with her dog and new husband, building surveyor Richard Fairs, 60, who she married in secret last summer.
Having almost “given up” on getting married, she and Richard are understood to have brought the congregation to tears when they married to the Sound of Music classic Climb Every Mountain.
Miranda Hart talked of her marriage on the BBC (Image: BBC)
The couple exchanged their vows at a 1,000-year-old church in the picturesque Hampshire village of Hambledon, in a service attended only by a handful of family and close friends.
They first met when the surveyor was called in to help remove mould from her home. Miranda and Richard got engaged during a trip to Kew Gardens in West London after “falling hopelessly in love.”
Now 18 months into the marriage, Miranda says: “We can’t envisage our lives apart can we? I think that is a great relief. I did not expect to get married, everything has been unexpected.
“The suffering has been unexpected and the good that can come from suffering has been unexpected and finding someone that completely understands me and gets me…he is the most incredibly patient person with me.
“To feel completely freeing and who I am…I am very loved. All of it, having an extraordinary moments of fame has been unexpected…the whole thing.
“The thing I love about it most, whether I have just come off stage at the 02 to 15,000 people, or being at home, I just like to be laughing and joyful. That is all that matters. I would not have expected to lose my joy, but to find it again has been the greatest gift ever.”
But if you think the new, calm, home loving Miranda means Christmas cards all round this year, think again.
Miranda laughs: “Do I love Christmas? Yes I do, as it is an invitation to play. But I don’t send Christmas cards. I hate Christmas cards. I also dislike this mad cultural pressure like ‘I have got to see these people before Christmas.’
“People will send you these texts saying ‘We must catch up.’ I am like ‘No, we don’t. Why can’t we meet in February?’ Let’s just calm down shall we?”