This Life Star Becomes Therapist After Fame

As the hard nosed, highly sexed and fiercely independent Anna Forbes, no one defined the rebellious spirit of This Life more than Daniela Nardini. 

Nardini had the world at her feet after playing the Scottish lawyer in Amy Jenkins' era-defining show about the often messy lives of five trainee solicitors. 

With London the setting and Cool Britannia providing a vibrant backdrop, This Life became a cultural phenomenon following its launch in 1996, pulling in more than 3.5million viewers at its peak and making household names of principal stars Andrew Lincoln and Jack Davenport. 

But unlike her peers, Nardini has turned her back on what promised to be a hugely successful acting career, opting instead for an alternative vocation in counselling.

Working with a predominantly female client base from her ground-floor flat in 's West End, the former actress, now 58 and a mother-of-one, is settled into a more sedate life after recovering from breast and mourning the death of her father, Aldo.  

'It was crazy, really, because This Life was such an instant success,' she told The Guardian. 'It provided me with lots of opportunities. But at the time, I had moved down [to London] from Scotland and I found it all quite overwhelming. 

'I’m a family girl and I missed everyone back home.' 

A word-of-mouth hit, This Life rapidly gained traction throughout the second half of the '90s, . 

It would serve as a sizeable springboard for co-stars Lincoln and Davenport, who have both enjoyed considerable success in the United States after establishing themselves on the show. 

Nardini would also forge a promising TV career away from This Life, but found her progress hampered by casting directors eager for her to play an alternative version of Anna, a role that earned her both BAFTA and Scottish BAFTA victories. 

A second Scottish BAFTA triumph came in 2009 courtesy of her starring role in Annie Griffin's hard-hitting This Town, but a turbulent ten year period, during which she was diagnosed with breast cancer, prompted her decision to step back from the acting industry. 

'Therapy has always been something I’ve been interested in, and, well … actors always lie about their age,' she said of her decision to retrain as a counsellor in 2019. 

'My younger brother says he gets confused about what age he is, because I’ve always taken a couple of years off mine. I’m having a big birthday next weekend and I’m glad to just admit I’m going to be 60, and leave the past decade behind. 

'Quite a lot happened in my fifties.' 

Nardini was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2018 after being invited for a routine NHS mammogram and would undergo a mastectomy. 

Ironically, one of the people who supported her through the early stages of her illness was her ex-husband Ivan Stein, an Oxford University-educated former civil servant-turned chef.

The pair were together for 13 years, living first in London before moving to Glasgow, where he co-owns one of the city's top restaurants, The Gannet.

They split, she says, after the death of her father Aldo in 2015 left her unable to cope emotionally with an already-failing marriage.

'When I was diagnosed, I felt it had happened because my heart was broken. It felt it was connected to what I had gone through in my life,' she said. 'And I’ve talked to quite a few people who have felt the same thing about their cancer. I felt it came from an emotional place.

'I knew quite quickly that it wasn’t going to kill me and I was going to be OK. And once it was done and I’d been through this treatment, I felt it had been dealt with physically, but not emotionally.'

She added: 'As a woman, to lose your breast is a very profound thing. The way I’d previously been recognised by the public, it was very sexualised. 

'Then suddenly to lose that part of yourself is very challenging. It changes your relationship with yourself, and not in a negative way.' 

Nardini's career pivot as a therapist was initially hindered by the pandemic, and she would suffer further setbacks in 2022 with the death of her mother, followed by the death of a close aunt, before finally gaining her counselling qualifications in 2024. 

'Because I’d been hit with a further emotional onslaught, training took me a while,' she said. 'If you’ve lived a life and you’ve been through stuff yourself, you are going to have more empathy for people who are going through similar things.'  

Discussing her divorce with the Daily Mail in 2020, Nardini said her former husband's all-encompassing job as a restaurateur and chef clashed with her own working commitments as an actress. 

She said: 'I think he worked so much it was a difficult combination with acting. I remember my friend said to me 'Imagine, an actress and a chef, how's that going to work?' She was right. I think we did well to manage 13 years.

'These things happen and we're good pals now and we've got our daughter and we share custody of her, so things are very amicable.'

Ivan also played a crucial role in telling Nardini's daughter Claudia, now 19, of her mother's cancer diagnosis.  

She added: 'There's still love there between us. Ivan took me to my first hospital appointment. He also helped me sit down with Claudia and tell her about what I was going through. 

'She was 11 at the time and she asked "Are you going to die?" I said "No, I'm not going to die, I'm going to get better." She said "That's ok then". 

'As long as she knew I wasn't going to die, she didn't care if I had one breast or two breasts. 

'Throughout all of it, Claudia's been the reason that life was worth living.'