‘Peaky Blinders’ Star Charlotte Riley Makes Rare Comments About Husband Tom Hardy
What To Know
- Charlotte Riley shared rare insights about her marriage to Tom Hardy in March 2026.
- She gave insight into how their love story began on the set of 2009’s Wuthering Heights and their family life.
- The couple have maintained a private relationship since marrying in 2014.
While Charlotte Riley may be best known for her onscreen romances — she played Tommy Shelby’s (Cillian Murphy) lover, May Carleton, in Peaky Blinders — her real-life relationship has attracted plenty of attention, too. For over a decade, the actress has been married to Tom Hardy, but they’ve kept details out of the spotlight.
Riley played Cathy Earnshaw in ITV’s 2009 adaptation of Wuthering Heights, next to Hardy as Heathcliff. It didn’t just give the actress her first major role after drama school: She also found love on set. The couple has been largely private about how their love story played out in the beginning, though in a recent interview, Riley shared new details about her A-lister husband and their love story.
It turns out, tea is the way into Riley’s heart. “He made me a really decent cup of tea,” Riley recalled to The Times. “Strong. There’s not much point if the spoon doesn’t stand up. And he told me that his mother was northern. So I thought, all right then. When somebody can give as good as they get, you know you’re in for a good time.”
Riley also confirmed that Hardy wasn’t channeling Heathcliff during their initial interactions. “It’s funny, there’s this myth that Tom’s some sort of Method actor, which he really isn’t,” she said. “He was just his cheeky-chappy self.”
The production has stuck with them since. “We were talking about it the other day,” Riley said. “There’s that famous line — ‘Whatever our souls are made of, yours and mine are the same.’ We shot it in a tiny church on the moors, and it was beautiful. We were sitting in a pew, and I had to turn to Tom and say my line. And he absolutely died laughing. Because when you say it with my northern accent, it sounds like, ‘Whatever arseholes are made of…’ And that was it, we were gone for the rest of the day. I do need to get a tattoo of that.”
Now 44, the actress shares three kids with Hardy, one being her 17-year-old stepson, Louis Thomas. Louis, whom Hardy welcomed with ex Rachael Speed, was in attendance at his father’s second wedding. Riley married Hardy in 2014, and have since had a daughter and a son. Since they were born in 2015 and 2019, the couple hasn’t revealed their names publicly.
She gave some insight into their life at home, though: “We do a lot of painting together as a family. The kitchen is like an art studio, full of art materials and big canvases. There are clay sculptures. One of us will start, somebody else will come in and add to it. Sometimes we spend hours, sometimes they don’t get touched.”
Riley, who will next be seen in the Masters of the Universe reboot later this year, told The Times that she plans to work near home while her kids are young. “And we tend not to work at the same time because that makes life easier,” she said, adding that her and Hardy’s work is “not a massive part of their [kids’] lives and [they] never wanted it to be.”
