When Glynis Barber – a regular columnist for hello!’s Second Act online community – hit her fifties, she was struck by anxiety so crippling that it threatened to bring her career to a halt. The actress, who had made her name in the Eighties crime drama Dempsey and Makepeace, and latterly Hollyoaks, found herself consumed with fear that she blamed partly on the menopause.
“I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy,” she tells Ateh Jewel on this week’s episode of hello!’s Second Act podcast. “It just went bam, and totally took me by surprise. It’s important to understand that a lot of women, when they go into menopause and post-menopause, will get depression and anxiety.”
Thankfully Glynis was able to take control to face her fears and reclaim her life and has returned to the stage in Agatha Christie’s Death on The Nile – having turned 70 last October.
“I have loads of strategies now,” she says. “I’m very organised. I never used to be, but it has happened as I’ve gotten older because it just makes me feel less stressed. At night, if feelings of anxiety or stress came up, I developed a strategy to look after myself – the big me mothering the little me who I called Little Glynnie, and I would give her a hug.
“Alcohol is not your friend if you’re suffering from anxiety, so I gave it up for a little while. The other thing you have to be very careful of is caffeine. For me, I had to give up coffee. Even when my anxiety was over, I only drink decaf.”
Relationship secrets
The actress, who moved from South Africa to London in her twenties after the death of her mother, met her husband, Michael Brandon, on the set of Dempsey and Makepeace, although it wasn’t until the show ended that they got together. Thirty years on, she is refreshingly honest about how they keep their relationship alive.
“We’ve always argued – it’s good,” she says. “I would say the two things in our favour are neither of us are quitters, and we have a good sense of humour. I think the thing in a marriage is you have to evolve together. If one person evolves and the other one doesn’t, or if you don’t embrace the changes in each other, then it’s not going to work. And that’s OK. Because who says you should be with one person your whole life?”
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