Featured Image Credit: Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images
Topics: Royal Family, UK News, Celebrity, Entertainment
Madison Burgess
Topics: Royal Family, UK News, Celebrity, Entertainment
Lady Frederick Windsor has opened up about what it's really like marrying into the Royal Family in a candid new interview.
The British actress, real name Sophie Lara Winkleman, 45, is married to Lord Frederick Windsor - a 46-year-old British banker who is the only son of the Prince and Princess of Kent and a first cousin once removed from the late Queen Elizabeth II.
The couple tied the knot in 2009 and celebrated their 16th wedding anniversary this year.
You might recognise Sophie for her acting roles, most notably in the US sitcom Two and a Half Men and Peep Show with David Mitchell and Robert Webb - she's also the half-sister of The Traitors host Claudia Winkleman.
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Now, she's lifted the lid on what it's like being in the most famous family in the world - and more importantly, the downsides of it.
Speaking to The Times, Sophie admitted: "The more I get to know the Royal Family, the more I get that their lives are total hell and that level of unasked-for fame is a form of torture."
She explained: "None of them went on Pop Idol or something to be famous. To have that sort of blinding spotlight in your face from when you’re born, not knowing quite whom you can trust, not knowing if someone’s going to betray you, people writing lies about you the whole time, is just brutal."
The actress added: "I feel for them all. I don’t think a life with that much scrutiny and pressure is remotely healthy, but they have no choice."
Elsewhere in the interview, she also talked about her marriage to Lord Frederick Windsor, admitting their wedding day was not your typical celebration.
She said: “I didn’t know anyone at my wedding. I had my best pals there, but basically it was full of faces I’d never seen before.”
Sophie recalled how she and her royal hubby met in Soho on New Year’s Eve in 2007, when both were leaving separate parties and went for the same taxi - talk about a real-life rom-com moment.
His first words to her were actually hilariously referencing her Peep Show character. The royal said: "You’re Big Suze. I love you!"
Two years later and the couple had tied the knot, getting married at the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court Palace, where 400 guests attended.
Sophie revealed she left the entire organisation of the big day to her mother-in-law, Princess Michael, hence not knowing many faces in the crowd.
She also shared more details of her wedding day in a separate interview with The Telegraph back in May, where she admitted it was actually a 'blur'.
Sophie said: "It was such a blur because we had to move to Los Angeles the day after and I had to start a brand new job the day after that.
"So we got married on Saturday and moved everything, our whole lives, out to America the day after. And I’d been so concentrating on the work that I hadn’t thought about the wedding."
She joked: "Which meant that my hair was so disgusting, and Freddie still gets upset about it. It was just disgusting."