Louis Theroux has had a rocky love life over the years, from divorcing his childhood sweetheart to almost splitting up from his wife.
The BAFTA award-winning filmmaker and journalist has candidly spoken out about his relationships. Louis, 53, has given insights into his first union - which he admits was really a 'marriage of convenience' - and shared the difficult reality of working away from home and trying to keep a family together.
In the early 2000s, Louis was living with his childhood sweetheart, writer Susanna Kleeman, in New York when they decided to tie the knot. "My girlfriend was living with me in New York. She was having trouble finding work... legally. So we got married, to make it easier for her," he told The Financial Times in 2005, explaining they didn't have wedding photos or anything sentimental. "It really was a marriage of convenience. I hope that I am not going to get arrested for that," he added.
Louis once didn't believe in marriage but has now been married twice (PA)
He met his second wife Nancy Strang while working at the BBC (Getty Images)The former couple got divorced after three years in 2001, then Louis went on to find romance with his current wife, Nancy Strang. Television producer Nancy has worked on several award-winning productions, including Timewatch and Imagine, during her 20-year career in the industry. She also co-founded production company Mindhouse Productions alongside Louis, where she also works as the director of development.
Speaking to Clara Amfo on her This City podcast in 2020, Louis recalled spotting Nancy around London and being stunned by her beauty. "I began seeing her around the White City building. And I remember thinking 'wow, she's beautiful'. She looked sort of like a French chanteuse," Louis said. "And she was sort of fashionable, but sort of not aggressively stylish. People didn't really say 'hipster' in those days, but she had a touch of hipster."
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Louis struggled to introduce himself to Nancy until he plucked up the courage to speak to her at a Christmas party. But Nancy claimed they had already met as she once attempted to speak to Louis in a lift but he didn't answer, although he found that "hard to believe". They had arranged to meet up at work the following day, but Louis "drank too much" and went in late, so their first date was postponed for a week. The pair ended up hitting it off and their first son, Albert, arrived in 2006, followed by Frederick in 2008 and Walter in 2014.
But as Louis continued to travel the world enjoying 'buffet breakfasts and heated swimming pools', while Nancy was at home coping with 'childcare, tantrums and laundry', their arguments became more frequent. In his 2019 book, Gotta Get Theroux This, he talked about the friction that grew between them. "In certain respects, we communicated better when I was away. With the imposed calm of distance and the interface of the written word, she would express her frustrations at the life she found herself backed into," he wrote.
Nancy felt like she'd given up everything for the family while Louis' life continued unaltered. "For my part, I toggled between viewing myself as being unfairly victimised and put upon for making a living and - on the other hand - seeing Nancy's side and wanting to do my best to support her and not wanting to be the stereotype of the guy whose wife is angry with him all the time," he said. Adding to their problems, he admitted, was that he 'slightly undervalued' Nancy for loving him.
Louis was also staunchly against marriage, in part due to his belief that weddings were 'attention-seeking and phoney'. In another part, it was down to his own 'inability to commit'. So it was against this backdrop that the couple argued over Louis' 40th birthday lunch at home, that Nancy had organised. Not thinking much about the argument, for Louis, it was just a row, for Nancy, it was the 'moment she detached'.
He continued: "I should have known something was up when Nancy was complaining less than usual about my going away. For some reason, she was surprisingly relaxed about the two two-week trips to Israel to film in the Occupied Territories. Then the real warning sign, which completely went over my head, was her saying: 'You know, if you ever want to pursue an outside physical relationship, I would be OK with that'." The pair embarked on couples' counselling and after a few months, Louis surprised them both by proposing at the top of a skyscraper in Los Angeles and they married in July 2013.
In an interview in July 2020, Louis revealed that he always consults Nancy on his TV projects, which have included visiting brothels and porn shoots. He told Who Magazine: "Clearly, I'm not going to do anything that's going to make my wife too uncomfortable." He added: "Nancy thinks that [I will retire soon], and I don't know that I have the heart to tell her that I don't see it on the horizon."
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