Death in Paradise star Cathy Tyson has been on our screens for nearly four decades, and she married her actor husband the same year as she first appeared on screen.
In 1984, the Surrey-born actress was launched to fame when she appeared in the TV series Scully, about a Liverpudlian teenager who dreamt of playing for Liverpool FC. She played Joanna.
The same year, rising star Cathy married her sweetheart Craig Charles, a performance poet and fellow actor whose huge break was just around the corner. It looked like Cathy’s life was safe in its trajectory towards a happy ending. However, her marriage to Craig was sadly an unhappy one. The pair divorced just five years later, in 1989.
Who is the husband of Cathy Tyson?
Cathy Tyson married Craig Charles in 1984, when she was just 19, and he was 20. They welcomed their son Jack in 1988. However, within a year, the couple were divorced.
Actress Cathy, who recently played Carly’s mum in the BBC One series Boiling Point, subsequently remained single for more than 25 years. She later admitted her “divorce was the light at the end of a very dark tunnel”. Happily, she eventually found love again, and married Michael Kingston in 2015.
Craig, who went on to find fame in Red Dwarf and later Corrie – where he played Lloyd Mullaney – remarried in 1999. He wed Jackie Fleming, and had two daughters named Anna-Jo and Nellie.
The now Radio 6 DJ, 59, has publicly admitted he once had a drug problem.
What happened between Cathy and husband Craig Charles?
Speaking several years after their divorce, Cathy told The Mirror that her bitter split from TV star Craig Charles left her so emotionally scarred that it took her years to find love again.
She revealed: “I just want to be happy. That’s the most important thing for me. And my marriage certainly didn’t make me feel happy. […] I used to blame Craig but I try not to any more.”
She added: “My divorce was the light at the end of a very dark tunnel. The divorce itself didn’t bring me down. I got divorced because I thought it was the only way forward.”
Cathy said her son Jack was about the best thing to come out of her marriage. Looking back, she believes the main reason the marriage failed was that both she and Craig were too young.
‘I wasn’t treated properly’
Recalling her five year marriage to husband Craig, Band of Gold star Cathy Tyson went on to say: “I wasn’t depressed all through my marriage, but a lot of the bad stuff was to do with being quite young and not strong or confident enough to look after myself in relation to Craig.
“I wasn’t treated properly. […] I went through a lot in that marriage at a very young age. And I took on a lot of responsibility when I wasn’t ready for it. I used to feel a lot of guilt about my marriage not succeeding and Jack not having his dad at home, but I don’t anymore. It’s not my fault the marriage didn’t succeed.”
During the interview, Cathy also revealed she was once a real-life victim of domestic violence at the hands of a former lover.
What has Cathy Tyson been in?
Cathy’s first ever TV role was as Joanna in the 1984 TV series Scully, but it was her next role that catapulted her to global fame. Two years later, in 1986, Cathy portrayed sex worker Simone in the award-winning film Mona Lisa, opposite Bob Hoskins. She was just 21.
After Mona Lisa, Cathy starred in the Wes Craven 1988 horror film The Serpent and the Rainbow. But it was another prostitute role which returned her to the spotlight in 1995. She starred as Carol Johnson in the hugely successful ITV drama series Band of Gold. The series ran from 1995 to 1997, and also starred Samantha Morton, Geraldine James, and Barbara Dickson. The spin-off, simply titled Gold, aired in 1997.
Cathy also played Steph McKenzie in the soap Night and Day, Miss Gayle in Grange Hill, and single mum Andrea Hayworth in Emmerdale. More recently, she’s popped up in McDonald & Dodds, Maternal, The Sandman, and Wolfe.
In 2021, she played Polly in the heartbreaking Covid drama Help, starring Jodie Comer and Stephen Graham – who she later co-star opposite in Boiling Point! Cathy played Carly’s mum Vivian in the TV spin off of the film set in a stressful restaurant kitchen.
This year, she played Doris Mathis in the Apple TV+ series Criminal Record. She also guest stars as Jacqueline StClair in the 100th episode of Death in Paradise.
How old is she? Where is she from?
Catherine Tyson was born on June 12, 1965. That makes her currently 58 years of age.
She was born in Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, the daughter of an English social worker mother and a Trinidadian barrister father.
Cathy grew up in Liverpool, having moved there with her parents when she was two years old. She was a pupil at St Winefrides school in Dingle, and went on to attend Liverpool’s Everyman Youth Theatre in her teens.
She dropped out of college at 17 to pursue an acting career – and the rest is history!
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Cathy Tyson stars in Death in Paradise on BBC One on Sunday, February 04, 2024 at 9pm.
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