Anne-Marie Duff's extremely guarded marriage and 'difficult' split from James McAvoy
Stepping into the spotlight comes with a certain degree of interest in your personal life, but Anne-Marie Duff managed to largely distance herself from media intrusion when it came to her private marriage with her ex-husband James McAvoy.
Despite being two well-known names, the Bad Sisters actress, 54, and the Split star, 45, chose to keep their relationship under wraps, rarely speaking about their 10-year marriage and split.
Take a look at what we know about the pair, whose love story began on the set of Channel 4's comedy drama, Shameless, in which Anne was cast as Fiona and James played her love interest, Steve.
Private marriage
The actors' on-screen romance developed off-screen, and they quietly tied the knot on 11 November 2006, keeping details of their wedding day under wraps.
Anne-Marie and James welcomed their son Brendan four years later, but the doting mother made a rare confession about the couple's difficulties naming their newborn son.
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Son's birth
Back in 2011, she described her son as "gorgeous" and gushed that she "felt like somebody had spiked my drink and I suddenly was so full of love that it was a little bit as if I was drugged."
Anne-Marie continued: "We thought we were going to have girl, so we had 15 girls' names lined up and a little boy popped out.
"We had no idea and we had hardly any boys' names. He's a Brendan and it suits him really, really well."
The pair avoided speaking about one another in public, with James explaining the reason why to the Washington Post: "We don't talk about each other much and we don't turn up together at lots of events. We both really rejoice in having a normal life," he said.
Amicable divorce
This level of privacy continued following their split in 2016. At the time, they released a joint statement that read: "It is with tremendous sadness that we have come to the decision to divorce.
"We enter this next phase with continued friendship, love and respect for one another and the shared focus of caring for our son.
"We ask that you respect our and, most importantly, our child’s privacy during this time."
The His Dark Materials star and the Suffragette star initially continued to live together after their split, but James later moved to Crouch End.
Post-split comments
James went on to find love with his personal assistant Lisa Liberati, whom he married in 2022, while Anne-Marie has not shared details of her love life.
While James has kept his comments to a minimum, his ex-wife has addressed her life post-split.
"My life has changed massively," the X-Men star told Mr Porter magazine in 2017. "At the same time, so much has stayed the same. One of the things that's stayed the same is that I still don’t talk about my personal life, really.
"Me and Anne-Marie, when we were together, it was our policy not to speak about each other in public. We rarely broke that and if we did, it was for tiny things – 'Yes, we are cooking turkey this Christmas' – and that policy still stands. Even separated, we're still respectful of each other and committed to doing that publicly and personally."
Meanwhile, Anne-Marie described her divorce as a "profound, difficult experience" in an interview with The Times in 2018.
The same year, she made an appearance on Radio 4 in which she chose to play a song called Love Letter, by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, which had a special meaning to her.
The song is "about that tipping point at which you fear you may lose love," she said, adding: "This sounds ironic, of course, but sometimes in a marriage you are never closer than the moment at which the two of you decide it’s time to finish.
"There is such pure intimacy in that moment and honesty and truth and kindness in all its many versions. So I suppose I picked this song because it tells me, 'Yeah, I can love and I can hurt. But I can love again.'"
