Downton Abbey star Michelle Dockery heartbroken like Lady Mary: "I consider myself a widow"
Downton Abbey star Michelle Dockery has opened up about the tragic death of her fiancé two years ago, saying she considers herself a widow.
“I’ve never been more committed to anything in my life than to him,” she said in an interview on the weekend with the Guardian.
“I don’t have the vocabulary to describe what it felt like and what it still feels like. I refer to myself as a widow, yes. We were engaged, and married at heart, and so I do consider myself a widow.”
Dockery, 35, and John Dineen, an Irish public relations director, were engaged for a year before he died at the age of 34.
But to add to the grief, Dockery’s character in Downton Abbey, Lady Mary Crawley, also lost her husband.
“One of the difficult things at the time was the parallels with Mary,” said the actress.
“It was just baffling, and still is to me, that my character’s storyline was so similar.”
Although Dockery said she felt “very excited” about leaving the show and moving on to other things, she may be portraying Lady Mary once more.
Julian Fellowes' big screen adaptation of his popular TV series has been given the green light.
During an exhibition for the show in Singapore this summer, Michael Edelstein, president at NBC Universal International Studios, said: “There's a movie in the works. It's been in the works for some time.
“We are working on getting the script right, and then we've got to figure out how to get the (cast) together.”