Daniela Nardini left acting after cancer, divorce and loss. Now she's a therapist in Glasgow

Nearly three decades on from This Life, Daniela Nardini looks nothing like the woman who made Anna Forbes a household name. Back then—the 90s, wine-soaked hotel bars, that pink lily in her hair—she was all sharp edges and messiness. The prototype for Fleabag, some said. Impossible to pin down.

These days she's in Glasgow. West End, to be precise. Working as a therapist. The softness is still there—that dark gaze—but something's shifted. There's a stillness now. An unsmiling kind of presence that suggests she's learned things the old Daniela didn't know yet.

She didn't plan any of this, obviously. After This Life ended, she kept acting. Did the whole thing—the roles, the profile, the work-hard-play-hard grind that defined her character and half the women in her generation. But life had other ideas. Cancer came. Then divorce. Then bereavement. Three things that don't fit neatly into a CV.

So she retrained. Became a therapist instead. Swapped the script for something messier and more real—actual human conversations, actual people's actual pain. The kind of work that probably demands more from you than any drama ever could.

Walking through Glasgow's tenement streets to meet her, there's this weird echo of the past everywhere. Her first flat. The nursery. The primary school, now expensive apartments. Time does that thing where it folds back on itself. But the moment she opens the door, all that nostalgia just stops. This version of Daniela isn't performing for anyone. Isn't trying to be interesting or provocative or anything much at all. She's just there.

It's a long way from Covent Garden and wine and the woman everyone wanted to be like. But maybe that's the point. Maybe you get to a certain point—50s, in her case—and you realize the sharp, messy thing was just one version. And there are others waiting underneath.