Tamsin Greig’s Husband Convinced Her to Take a Career-Changing Role

Tamsin Greig is one of the fortunate people to have worked at the Royal Shakespeare Company. She worked as Beatrice on Much Ado About Nothing there.

But she almost didn't take up the career-changing job. If her husband, Richard Leaf, didn't step in and convince her to, she might never have.

Greig's husband has supported her through their time together, whether on the professional front or personal.

Tamsin Greig's Husband Might Have Changed Her Career

Greig and her spouse had had three children before 2006. Their youngest daughter Roxie was just 18 months old.

That was when she was offered a season at the RSC. She was offered the role of Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing.

Upon receiving the offer, she thought it impossible to do. She could not bear the thought of being away from her family for too long.

"I said no when they offered it," she told The Guardian in March 2011. "My family was very young and I couldn't bear the guilt of leaving them for months."

She thought she had just two choices if she took up the job — either be away from her children for long periods or move the entire family to Stratford.

That's when her husband and her agent stepped in.

Leaf told her at the time, "Of course you don't have to do this job." But he also added that many actors would kill for the job.

In another interview with Independent in August 2012, she recalled her spouse asking her, "[but] is it impossible?"

He convinced her she could do the job. And he was right.

It had been a decade since she last did theater when she accepted the job, but she wasn't half bad at portraying Beatrice.

Her performance was so well-received that she got an Oliver award and a Critics' Circle award. Her career took a new and better trajectory after this.

"All these doors start to swing open," she said to The Guardian. "Imagine if I had just gone, 'No I'm too afraid to do it'?"

She later called her experience working at the RSC "an absolute privilege."

Tamsin Greig's Life with Husband and Children

Greig met her husband, actor and screenwriter Leaf, at the wrap party of BBC's Neverwhere, a TV show they both worked on. That was in 1996.

The couple got married just a year later. They now have three children — sons Jakob Zebedee Leaf and Nathanael Zephaniah Leaf, and daughter Roxie Joy Leaf.

Tamsin Greig with her children — sons Jakob and Nathanael — she had with husband, Richard Leaf. (Photo: Instagram)

The family now lives in Kensal Green, North West London.

Elsewhere in her sit-down with The Guardian, she joked about how she got more jobs the more children she had.

It had been "virtually impossible" to raise children while having a full-time career. But she praised her spouse for being hands-on with the children.

She also mentioned getting help from her parents-in-law, godparents, friends, and a "brilliant" nanny.

All this while her spouse, too, maintained a career in acting. He has been in movies such as Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Hannibal Rising, and The Friend (2019), his latest project.

When asked by Independent if she ever had a rivalry with her other half in terms of career success, she said they had none.

Greig didn't understand why anyone would want to know if they did. Then she alluded to how her relationship with her partner had been — "You either agree to do it together or you don't."