PROFILE
She is arguably one of the friendliest and funniest actors of her generation, but Caroline Quentin is also an introverted loner who prefers the greenhouse to the green room. Laura Silverman meets a woman of many parts
Caroline Quentin has her eye on some fungi. “When I was young, I spent a lot of time on my own and had to amuse myself,” she says, examining the log. “I can obsess over seeds, feathers, fungi, leaves. I love all the little details.” We meet on the Devon-Somerset borders, where Caroline, her husband Sam and an entourage of two dogs and four cats are renting a cottage. The actor, who has brought warmth and humour to TV dramas from Jonathan Creek to Dickensian for 30 years, relishes the countryside.
Caroline, now 63, has lived near here since the early 2000s and, until recently, owned a 35-acre plot with an orchard, swimming pond and vegetable beds. “I’m not an expert but I love growing things,” she says, talking about her new memoir, Drawn to the Garden (Frances Lincoln,£20). The project is a spin-off of her Instagram account @cqgardens, where she might post about digging up a giant onion or the beauty of a wild garlic leaf. Her feed is gentle and absorbing. “I try not to show off because I think it’s awful when people go, ‘Look at this lovely thing I’ve done.’ It makes you want to go back to bed – or it does me. Gardening, I think, should be about the endeavour, not the results.”
SEEDS OF CHANGE
The decision to leave her much-loved home and garden was sudden. “I went profoundly deaf overnight,” Caroline says. “It was really shocking.” The couple were in Italy and drove back overnight to see a doctor. Caroline had developed sudden sensorineural hearing loss in one ear, a serious condition when the inner ear, the cochlea in the inner ear or the nerve pathways between the ear and brain become damaged. Sufferers have a brief window to get treatment. “I was terrified because I was about to be in a play and I was thinking, ‘I’m not going to know my cues or if someone’s coming in,’” she says. “‘I’m going to have to spend my whole life watching people.’”
After a course of strong steroids, much of Caroline’s hearing returned. She has been left with tinnitus, which “drives me up the bloody wall” and escalates with stress: “I’m not good with big groups of people anymore. I get this weird, weird stuff happening.” It’s not all bad. “I feel thankful for it, in an odd sort of way,” she says, explaining how it changed her perspective. “Sam and I went, ‘Let’s get out of the big house. Let’s downsize. Let’s start doing things we want to do.” She gives a merry laugh. “A lot of actors go, ‘I want to die in my dressing room.’ I want to die in my greenhouse. I want to be there till the last minute, potting on.”
