James Nesbitt - Personal Life

Personal Life

Nesbitt is married to Sonia Forbes-Adam. The two met when Nesbitt went to the final call-back for Hamlet at Loughborough Hall in 1989, and they soon began dating. They split up for a year after the release of Hear My Song but reunited and married in 1994. They have since had two daughters, Peggy and Mary. Nesbitt's three sisters all became teachers. In 2002, a Sunday tabloid published an interview with a legal secretary who claimed to have had a two-month affair with Nesbitt. Shortly afterwards, another tabloid story revealed an affair with a prostitute, who claimed Nesbitt had boasted of liaisons with his Cold Feet co-star Kimberley Joseph, and Amanda Brunker, a former Miss Ireland. Commenting on the publication of details about his personal life, Nesbitt has said he feared that he would lose his marriage, though the exposing of his "dual life" allowed him to "take a long and considered look" at himself.

Nesbitt is a patron of Wave, a charity set up to support those traumatised by the Troubles. The charity faced closure due to funding problems before Nesbitt encouraged celebrities and artists to become involved. Since 2005, he has been a UNICEF UK ambassador, working with HIV and AIDS sufferers, and former child soldiers in Africa. He describes the role as "a privilege". Writing in The Independent about his visit to Zambia in 2006, Nesbitt concluded that the children he met were owed a social and moral responsibility. The article was described in the Evening Standard as "moving and notably well-crafted". Since 1999, he has been a patron of Action Cancer, a result of both his father's affliction with prostate cancer and a storyline in the second series of Cold Feet, where his character suffered testicular cancer. He has been an honorary patron of Youth Lyric, one of Ireland's largest theatre schools, since 2007.

He is a fan of football teams Coleraine and Manchester United. In 2003, Nesbitt made a donation of "thousands of pounds" to Coleraine, after the team came close to bankruptcy. He has called the team "a heartbeat" of Coleraine and encouraged more people to watch Irish League football. Nesbitt was a vocal opponent of Malcolm Glazer's 2005 takeover of Manchester United, though after the completion of that deal he acted in television advertisements promoting executive boxes at Old Trafford, for which he was criticised by fans. To counter the criticism, he pledged one half of his £10,000 fee to the Manchester United Supporters' Trust and the other half to UNICEF.

In March 2010, Nesbitt accepted the ceremonial position of Chancellor of the University of Ulster, succeeding former Lord Mayor of London Sir Richard Nichols. Gerry Mallon, the chair of the university ruling council, expected Nesbitt to "bring considerable energy, dynamism and commitment" to the post. Following his official installation on 8 June 2010, Nesbitt said, "Rather than being just an informal role officiating at ceremonies, I think I can act as an ambassador. I have access to an awful lot of people and places because of my work. I hope to be a voice that can be heard, not just at the university, but also outside promoting the importance of the funding of education. If that involves me being at Stormont, then I'd be very happy to do that. Clearly these public spending cuts are going to have an impact and it's important to fight for funding because it's about investing in students and investing in the future of Northern Ireland. I believe I can bring something to that, otherwise I wouldn't have taken this on."