Paula Wilcox has been thrilling fans in Channel 5 thriller The Fortune, a four-part show about a woman who inherits a mysterious fortune from someone she believes she's never met before. Paula plays Linda, the mother of main character Amanda who suffers from dementia.
The actress rose to fame in the 1970s, thanks to her roles in major sitcoms during the decade, including the likes of The Lovers, The Liver Birds, Man About the House and Miss Jones and Son.
The 76-year-old has since secured roles in The Stalker's Apprentice, The Smoking Room, The Queen's Nose, The Large Family, Mount Pleasant alongside appearing in both Coronation Street and Emmerdale.
The star is currently happily married to Nelson "Skip" Riddle, but Paula was previously married to fellow actor Derek Seaton, who sadly passed away in 1979, nine years after they walked down the aisle.
The couple first met when Paula was 19, and they married a year after following a whirlwind romance. They remained together until his death at the age of 35 of a brain haemorrhage.
Derek's sad passing
Reflecting on his passing with the Telegraph in 2014, she said: "It was bloody young. I was thinking about this the other day, and I realised that at the time I had spent a third of my life with him. It was a shock.
"But I think with any kind of tragedy or setback – and you know, we've all had them – it's really [about] how you deal with it. Any tragedy, it becomes part of you. It becomes part of who you are."
© Disney General Entertainment ConWhen asked whether the death still has an impact on her, she responded: "Oh yeah, definitely. It makes you a different person. You grow, and you learn to cope."
Derek's death wasn't the only shock passing that the actress had to deal with, as her close friend, Richard Beckinsale, who she starred with in The Lovers, had died just months prior following a heart attack at the age of 31.
© Getty ImagesSpeaking to the Telegraph back in January, she said: "I was doing [Alan Ayckbourn's] Bedroom Farce on stage when the news came in about Richard. It was really shocking. I didn't know what to do at all, but we had to do the show. You just go through the motions, and then my husband died about six months later, very, very suddenly. It came out of nowhere.
"The Eighties were strange because of all that loss. I was a little bit wobbly. I was working a lot – I did quite a lot of theatre, but I didn't do much telly. I just stayed away."
