EXCLUSIVE: Actress Sarah Parish discusses the significance of her charitable work with her husband James Murray and their departed daughter Ella-Jayne.
Sarah Parish has just completed a five-hour road trip from Cornwall following a “nice little three-day break” with her actor husband James Murray and some close pals – a refreshing pause in a life running at full pelt. Sarah, 57, has spent the last decade juggling two remarkably different careers: the unpredictable but creatively rewarding world of acting and what she calls the “grounding” reality of running a children’s charity born from personal tragedy.
Ella-Jayne, the mother of Sarah and James, was born with the obscene genetic disorder Rubinstein-Taybi Syndrome, which caused her to develop congenital heart failure in January 2009. They established The Murray Parish Trust five years later, raising more than $ 5 million for Southampton Children’s Hospital, where Ella-Jayne spent the majority of her short life.
The charity, which was renamed Inspire This this year, aims to close what Sarah describes as a “real gap” in support for seriously ill children and their families. In recognition of their charitable work, Sarah and James both received MBEs in July.
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There isn’t much to do in a hospital for a child who can’t get out of bed, according to Sarah, who says an intervention was required. By providing everything from drama classes, yoga, and music workshops to comforting spaces in paediatric units where parents can process the unthinkable, She and James are on a mission to reach every seriously ill child in the UK by 2035.
“If your child passes away, there are rooms in hospitals where you can stay with the child for a bit before you say goodbye,” Sarah explains, recalling her own memory in such a space after her baby daughter lost her fight for life. “It was incredibly depressing. It was a very bare, depressing room and it just doesn’t make your life any better at all.
The hospital was not to blame, they said. Simply put, that is the last thing they will buy. We’re merely attempting to improve a bad situation for everyone. Anything to assist people going through the most agonizing period of their lives.
That aid came from Sarah’s charity. She says it kept us moving, really, kept us connected, and kept us grounded because, “we’ve always got something that’s ours,” she says. Because the charity is overly happy and joyful, I very rarely feel angry right now. Funny is how it feels to cry. It changes frequently.
Sarah got her career break in ITV ’s Peak Practice in 1997 before landing roles in BBC dramas Cutting It and Mistresses then Sky One’s Trollied . She later scored tougher parts, including playing a cold-blooded killer in ITV thriller Bancroft .
Juggling her TV roles and the charity can at times feel overwhelming, she admits. At the start of summer she was simultaneously filming the second series of ITV trainee police comedy Piglets and Netflix drama Geek Girl while managing the charity’s rebrand plus organising its Christmas fundraising event for which she has banked support from celebrity pals including Hugh Bonneville, Dame Imelda Staunton, David Tennant and Amanda Holden.
Has she ever thought about giving up acting to slow down the flow and concentrate solely on fundraising?
” No! “Sarah roars”. We are passionate about acting. The charity requires a lot more of our time, which is why it is so difficult to do, but the two work so well together because one is real and the other is heavy. Without the acting, the charity wouldn’t be where it is today.
Sarah engages in a conversation with herself when asked what is her greatest career achievement. My God, I love you! She speculates that Bancroft was behind her own show before considering the 2017 BBC Spoof Comedy W1A as a choice. That job was fun to me. I enjoyed going to work, I became enthralled over the lines, and the freedom to remove the mickey from the BBC without being fired was something I adored.
Starring in award-winning 2012 American drama Hatfields & McCoys , playing Kevin Costner’s wife, is also up there. She says, “I remember thinking, ‘This is so weird. I’m from Yeovil. What am I doing next to Kevin Costner? This is ridiculous.’”
Did she ever consider them to be “lifelong mates”? He was wonderful, but she didn’t, she claimed. I was too scared.
Sarah admits that she occasionally longs to be “one rung higher on the ladder,” professionally, in a calmer place where multiple future jobs are permanently banked rather than a “hand-to-mouth” existence, where she doesn’t know from one job to the next what will follow.
She claims that security is appealing in a sector where women over the age of 40 are shockingly underrepresented despite the unpredictable nature of her career keeping her “sharp”. She has taken a more proactive approach lately, developing her own projects, particularly two book TV adaptations.
She admits, “I wish I had the courage to do it sooner.” I abruptly left after one day. Why I’m holding off is beyond me. Just permit things to happen. I’m not ready to be put out of pasture, say more and more actors, especially older female actors, because they’ve just left. “
Sarah believes she escaped relatively unscathed after leaping quickly on HRT after becoming “particularly ratty” and noticing it was harder to learn her lines during perimenopause in her early fifties.
“My fifties have been by far my best decade,” if only because I’ve reached a point where I no longer care as much as I do now. I’m who I am, which is a really lovely feeling. You accept me or reject me.
However, Sarah is upset about the effects of excessive smartphone use on teenagers, not least her 15-year-old daughter Nell, who was born a few months after Ella-Jayne’s passing, even though social media criticism hardly registers (“I just feel sad for people who post nasty things”).
Sarah was told she couldn’t naturally give birth to a sibling after two “traumatic” births. She states, “I always believed I would have a large family, and we were prepared to adopt until Nell told us she had no interest in having a sibling.” I can recall being a little let down for a while before moving on.
Sarah used to be a party girl, but now she finds true happiness by spending a weekend doing nothing at her family’s rural Hampshire home. Amanda Holden, Lisa Faulkner, Angela Griffin, Lucy Gaskell, Tamzin Outhwaite, and Nicola Stephenson, who all met on the set of Cutting It, are her closest friends, besides an annual pre-Christmas girlie weekend away.
“You could make a sitcom out of it,” says Sarah of their “hilarious” WhatsApp group. “Sometimes I’ll open my phone and there’ll be 75 messages. It’s ridiculous conversations about all sorts of nonsense. They’re funny girls so we have a few hysterics.”
Find out more at imaginethis.com. org. uk
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