DAVINIA:
Davinia Taylor reveals how she beat depression and addiction to feel her best yet in her forties and reveals why she’s in no rush to get wed again
She had a toxic split from husband of seven years Dave Gardner in 2010, which she’s described as her rock bottom. But despite being engaged to partner Matthew Leydon for 10 years, Davinia Taylor says she’s in no rush to head down the aisle once again.
“It’s a lot of admin, which I hate,” she laughs. “It took me seven years to change my passport from my married name –and I really hated my ex-husband, but I still had my old surname because I couldn’t be bothered to go to the passport office.
“We’ll sort something out and we’ll do it, but it will probably be on our own in the garden. It’s an admin thing rather than a love thing.”
While Davinia, 47, is now with Matthew –with whom she shares sons Asa, nine, and Jude, seven –she rose to fame in the ’90s as part of the famous Primrose Hill set while married to Dave, often pictured partying with Kate Moss, Sadie Frost and Meg Mathews.
Behind the glitz and glamour of her life as a socialite and Hollyoaks actress, Davinia later revealed that she had been “drowning” in addiction and depression –a feeling she described as like “screaming underwater”.
SPRING IN HER STEP
At her lowest in 2010, Davinia lost custody of her three-year-old son, Grey, to her ex-husband, sports agent and David Beckham’s best friend Dave –later admitting that she had, at one point, downed double shots every 45 minutes.
Now Davinia has been sober for 13 years and after losing 4st in 2021 and dropping from a size 16 to a size 8, she tells Closer she feels the best she ever has. The mum-of-four says, “I wake up with a spring in my step as opposed to when I was overweight, inflamed and swollen, when I would wake up every day like I had Vaseline over my eyes –that blurry sort of existence.
