“The author and TV presenter, 46, who tied the knot with Bridesmaids star Chris O’Dowd in 2012, says she works hard to cover bills and rent but recently had her bank card declined.”, — write: www.dailymail.co.uk
The author and TV presenter, 46, who tied the knot with Bridesmaids star Chris O’Dowd in 2012, says she works hard to cover bills and rent but recently had her bank card declined.
‘I work pay cheque to pay cheque,’ said Dawn, 46. ‘I’m always broke. My card got declined last week. I’m like, what the f*** is happening? When will this end?’
Dawn returned to London with Chris and their two children – Art, eleven, and Valentine, eight – last summer after eight years in Los Angeles.
Speaking on the White Wine Question Time podcast, she explained: ‘I’ve never seen myself as a celebrity. Even though I’m married to Chris, who is quite a well-known actor, I don’t think either of us have ever seen ourselves as celebrities.
‘I guess if I was a celebrity, I’d get paid lots of money to do things that aren’t necessarily my job or don’t really feed what I do, but I don’t. My job is writing, with the occasional little ad on Instagram to pay the rent.’
Dawn, who shot to fame fronting the 2007 BBC documentary, Super Slim Me, for which she slimmed down to a size zero by using drastic dieting regimes, recalled meeting Chris just as her own career was collapsing.
‘Everything had fallen apart,’ she said. ‘My TV career had just gone. I was so poor. I was so upset. I had zero confidence. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I’d just met Chris, and he was on this trajectory up. I thought, well maybe this is just it. I’m just a girlfriend, and that’s it.’
Her first ever red carpet was the 2011 premiere of Bridesmaids, the blockbuster that catapulted Chris to international fame.
‘I always thought that if I was in this position, it would be because I’d done something to deserve it,’ she reflected.
While Chris’s star rose, Dawn struggled to find her place – first Hollywood, and then back in London.
‘We were living in LA and I just said to Chris, I’ve got to go back to London to try and claw back my career,’ she said of their first stint in the States. ‘And we came back to London for a bit and I’d go for these meetings at TV production companies and I’d been successful.
‘I had my own series on Channel 4… and they’d be like, ‘What do you want to do?’ and I was like, ‘I want to do what I do’. But no one wanted to employ me.’
She was dropped by Stylist magazine, where she had written a regular column. ‘They sacked me,’ she said. ‘I was cool. I had my own show on Channel 4… then as my career just kind of… declined, I think they looked at me and were like, well she’s just not that interesting anymore.
‘It was the final blow to my confidence. I was absolutely on the floor because I always felt that writing would be the thing that saved me.’
Salvation came in the form of an email from an editor who had read her columns and encouraged her to try fiction.
‘She hadn’t realised that I’d just been fired,’ Dawn explained. ‘She said, ‘I think you’d write amazing fiction for young adults.’ And I remember being like, this is the call. This is the thing I thought I was gearing up to do my whole life.’
She was offered a two-book deal. In 2013, she released her first novel, Paper Aeroplanes, the fictional tale of an intense female friendship loosely inspired by her own childhood in Guernsey.
She has since become a bestselling author but admits the grind never stops and income can fluctuate. ‘When you think of yourself as an artist as opposed to a celebrity, there’s always a grind. There’s always hard work to do.’
She added that she’s thrilled to be back in London now.
‘I just feel this city in my bones,’ she said. ‘I’m so happy to be back. It was probably more of a transition for the kids and for Chris than it was for me, but I just absolutely love it.
‘I look at the news and watch America like it’s some horrible terrible movie, which will never end. I just don’t want to be a part of it right now.
‘London – I know we’ve got our own issues here as well but it’s that feeling of safety. I started to feel so unsafe in America all the time. I didn’t want to take my kids to the playground.
‘There were gunshots. And every morning on the local news, someone else has been shot.
‘While we were at the school we were at – two texts: ‘active shooter nearby do not come to school’. I’m like, I can’t do this anymore.’
She said LA life had become isolating, especially with her husband away filming for months at a time. ‘Chris was never there,’ she added. ‘He was in Atlanta for eight months of the year and I’m like, why am I here?’
Although the move back was chaotic – ‘We couldn’t get into state schools, couldn’t find anywhere to live, I’ve got five pets – it was just all very stressful’ – she says it was the right decision for the whole family.