Meet the Real-Life Loves of the ‘Call the Midwife’ Cast

Helen George and Dan Innes

Since season 1, George has portrayed the outgoing Beatrix “Trixie” Aylward, who found love with Matthew Aylward. In real life, she is dating real estate consultant Dan Innes.

George debuted her relationship with Innes on Instagram in March 2025, sharing photos from a weekend getaway. She has since continued to share more photos of special moments with him.

Previously, she was married to actor Oliver Boot from 2012 until 2015.

In 2016, she began dating her Call the Midwife costar Jack Ashton. Their first daughter, Wren Ivy, was born in 2017, followed by Lark in 2021. The couple split in 2023.

Jenny Agutter and Johan Tham

Agutter’s character Sister Julienne is the sister-in-charge of Nonnatus House. Off-screen, she has been married to her husband Johan Tham for over 35 years.

In 1989, the actress and Swedish hotelier met at an arts festival in Bath, England. They married in August 1990 and welcomed their son Jonathan on Dec. 25, 1990.

“It saved me,” Agutter told the Daily Express in 2012 of her marriage. “I had got stuck in my ways, ran my life the way I wanted, took holidays when I wished and went where I wanted. I did have long relationships but they all ended.”

She continued, “I was thinking: ‘Maybe I will just remain single.’ And, more worryingly: ‘What does the future hold?’ Then all this came at once with Johan. It came as a shock but it was the best thing that happened.”

Judy Parfitt

In Call the Midwife, Judy Parfitt plays Sister Monica Joan, one of the first women in Britain to qualify as a midwife. In real life, Parfitt was married to actor Tony Steedman before his death in February 2001.

The couple met in 1960 at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and married three years later. They welcomed their son David in 1964.

In the show, Parfitt’s character retired from her work as a midwife due to dementia, an illness the actress could relate to in her personal life after supporting her husband through his diagnosis.

“Having watched my husband, the actor Tony Steedman, succumb to this terrible disease over ten years, depicting Sister Monica Joan’s condition is still an extremely important aspect of the role to me,” Parfitt wrote in a 2014 essay for the Daily Mail.

“Like Sister Monica Joan, he was never happier than when he was surrounded by his books, especially his many volumes of Shakespeare,” she added.

Laura Main

In Call the Midwife, Main’s character Shelagh Turner left her life in the convent to be with Dr. Patrick Turner and raise a family together.

Off-screen, she keeps her personal life on the private side, but says there are “little bits” of Shelagh that she sees in herself.

“If she was a real person, I think I’d like her in real life. I can see little bits of her which are like me — she’s quite precise, careful and thoughtful — but I think she’s calmer than me,” Main told The Irish News in 2019. “Although she copes way better than I ever would with her incredibly busy life, working and bringing up a family.”

Stephen McGann and Heidi Thomas

McGann’s on-screen wife is Shelagh Turner, but his wife in real life is series creator Thomas. The couple first met in the mid-1980s when McGann went in for an audition at the Liverpool Playhouse for a play written by Thomas.

“We started chatting about the character and by the time I left the room I was madly in love,” the actor told The Times in 2022. “Years later we were talking about love at first sight, saying what an idiotic theory it is. Then we realised that had happened to us.”

They both had partners at the time and “lost touch,” but ran into each other a few years later at a hotel, he explained.

“We had the most ridiculous argument over nothing and I stormed off,” he said. “I got to my room and realised she was the woman I was supposed to marry.”

“The first thing that attracted me to Steve was our understanding of dramatic material. I loved him as an actor before I loved him as a man,” Thomas added.

McGann and Thomas married in 1990 and share one son, Dominic, together.

Cliff Parisi and Tara Wyer

Cliff Parisi’s character Fred Buckle found love with haberdashery shop owner turned mayor Violet Buckle on Call the Midwife, but the actor is happily married in real life to Tara Wyer.

Parisi was “a bit lonely” when he met Wyer, who was a BBC producer he worked with. He joked when they first met, she “wasn’t impressed” with his career as an actor, he told Saga travel insurance in a 2024 interview.

“I had this new girlfriend and took her to watch some filming, and I said to Tara, ‘What do you think of my new girlfriend?’ It was obvious she disapproved,” he continued. “So, I said, ‘Well, you go out with me then.’ That was 15 years ago and after going out that night, we haven’t been apart since.”

The actor added, “What I love about her is that she doesn’t take any crap. She is a tough woman and I need that.”

He is a father of five, and has multiple grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.

Natalie Quarry and Lewis Thorne

Natalie Quarry’s character Rosalind Clifford arrived at Nonnatus House in season 13 of Call the Midwife.

She has been in a relationship with Lewis Thorne since December 2017, whom she described on Instagram as “the most wonderful person in the world.”

Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero

Despite Jenny Worth (formerly played by Raine) leaving Call the Midwife at the conclusion of season 3, Vanessa Redgrave has continued to serve as the older version of the character, narrating the series.

Redgrave and theatre director Tony Richardson were married from 1962 to 1967, and welcomed two daughters together: actresses Natasha Richardson, born in 1963, and Joely Richardson, born in 1965.

In 1969, she welcomed a son, Carlo Gabriel Nero, with Italian actor Franco Nero. For a long time, Redgrave and Nero were just friends, but they rekindled their romance later in life.

On Dec. 31, 2006, they exchanged rings at a party with friends and family, but did not legally tie the knot.

Redgrave told PEOPLE in 2010 of their relationship, “You’re not impatient to turn somebody into something they’re not. You just love them for who they are.”

“When you rediscover love, it’s even stronger. It’s not physical anymore, it’s something deep,” Nero said.