Why did Charlotte die? (2025)

The death at 33 of Charlotte Coleman, redhaired pixie star of 'Four Weddings and a Funeral', shocked her fans. But those close to her weren't so surprised. Louise Gannon investigates a troubled lifeONE hundred people turned up at the Mill Hill Buddhist Centre in north London l

The death at 33 of Charlotte Coleman, redhaired pixie star of 'Four Weddings and a Funeral', shocked her fans. But those close to her weren't so surprised. Louise Gannon investigates a troubled lifeONE hundred people turned up at the Mill Hill Buddhist Centre in north London last November and TV producer Rod Gilchrist was one of them. As he made his way in he noticed on the wall a publicity shot of Charlotte Coleman, so big it seemed to fill the room. Her eyes were as sparkling as ever, but her face looked thin and pale. For a long time, Rod had felt that this day might come.

Rod noticed that none of the actors with whom Charlotte had worked on the hit film Four Weddings and a Funeral was present: Hugh Grant, Simon Callow, John Hannah. Instead he saw only close friends, family and a few colleagues. People shifted awkwardly in their seats as Tibetan monks in saffron-coloured robes chanted Charlotte's name. A couple of eulogies were spoken but few people cried.

Then a young man in a long, grey coat rose up from his seat and turned to the crowd. He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket and began to read in a voice that seemed to shake the entire room. The man was Matt Jones, Charlotte's childhood sweetheart. "There is so much hurt," said Matt, a writer.

"Charlotte went through so many people, so fast and so full on . . . " A pause. "There's so much complicated, lonely hurt left now. There are people here who struggled with their love of her and who couldn't finally keep a hold.

"But not one of us, I am absolutely sure, did not know the magic and heartache, the permanent crisis of loving her."

Ever since Charlotte was 11 and starred in the children's TV show Worzel Gummidge, people assumed that in real life she was as cheeky and adorable as the roles she played. But her life was a permanent crisis. When she died of an asthma attack on November 14, 2001, aged just 33, the public didn't realise that Charlotte had left behind a string of nightmares: anorexia, bulimia, drugs, and the death of the boyfriend she adored.

Rod, who was producer on Charlotte's last television series, the sitcom How Do You Want Me?, says he wasn't surprised her life had ended like this.

"I always knew Charlotte was never going to make old bones," he says. "The last time I saw her was at a horse racing day at Goodwood. She was so thin. She was wearing a size-six suit that completely swamped her. I have a photograph of the two of us together and her face is crossed with darkness."

Charlotte Coleman was born in north London on April 3, 1968. The eldest daughter of actress Ann Beach and Canadian television producer Francis Coleman, she grew up in a bohemian Muswell Hill household in north London with her sister Lisa.

Charlotte started taking acting classes at the Anna Scher Theatre School in Islington at the age of eight. "She was a bright, gorgeous pixie, just bursting with talent," Scher recalls. "She had an instinct for acting."

She went to primary school at St Michael's School in Highgate, where fellow students remember her as a "funny, happy child". "She was the most popular girl in our class," recalls one schoolfriend.

So it came as no surprise when Charlotte won her first television acting role at the age of 11, as Sue in Worzel Gummidge. Two years later Charlotte landed an even bigger part, playing the bad girl Marmalade Atkins in a popular children's series.

But even though everyone who knew Charlotte believed she was destined to lead a charmed life, in reality her troubles were just beginning.

"I was probably the most irritating child," Charlotte said two years before she died. "I was very destructive and undisciplined, running about and smashing things up, and I was wild in my teens. I caused my parents absolute hell. I graffitied the house, I was smoking regularly at 12, had boyfriends at 13, lost my virginity early, had my nose pierced at 14, shaved my head and then had a bluebird tattooed on my bottom when I was 15.

"I look back now and realise I must have been a monster out of control. I do wish my parents had been more authoritative."

She and Matt Jones lived in the same neighbourhood, and when they first met Matt recalls Charlotte drinking vodka out of a baby bottle. He was 14 at the time and thought she was rebellious, beautiful, alive and free. He fell in love with her on the spot.

But Matt soon realised that Charlotte's passionate nature had a dark side. "She'd tear down the stairs in rage or rapture," he says. "She'd scream abuse at the first person she met or cover them with kisses."

In her teens, it looked as though Charlotte was veering closer to self-destruction. She became a chain smoker not a good habit for a person born with asthma. At 14 she left home and moved into a council flat with a friend, and she was expelled from Camden High School for Girls for smoking and drinking. At 15 she tried heroin for the first time, says a friend.

After her expulsion, Charlotte used her television earnings to pay her way at the liberal boarding school Dartington Hall, in Devon, but she only stayed a year. "She was the sort of person you could talk to about anything," says Rebecca Welstead, a Dartington friend. "She was someone you really wanted to be happy, but someone you feared was never going to be."

At 16, having no formal qualifications, Charlotte decided to pursue her acting career full-time. The same year, her luck changed. One night at a party she met John Laycock, a 20-year-old drugs counsellor, and fell in love. The relationship quickly became serious; they moved into their own flat and lived happily together for three years. They talked about getting married one day.

Then, in 1987, Charlotte had a phone call so terrible that she dropped the receiver. She was told that John had been knocked off his bike in a London street. He was dead at just 23. From then on, Charlotte withdrew into herself, locked her doors, unplugged the phone, and stopped eating.

"She went into complete shock," recalls one of her friends. "All she'd have was black coffee and lettuce with vinegar. It was as if she was punishing herself."

Charlotte's lack of desire for food eventually turned into a full-blown eating disorder, which would haunt her until the day she died. "She stopped seeing people for long periods after John's death," one friend says. "It was, I believe, the single greatest torture of her life."

Still, Charlotte had spells where she broke through her depression, and she managed to renew the relationship with her parents. At 21 she won a Royal Television Society award for her portrayal of the lesbian teenager Jess in the BBC adaption of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.

But her anorexia and bulimia persisted. "She started going to Overeaters Anonymous, but then she said she couldn't bear being with all those fat people, so she went to AA instead. She used to go to the same meetings as Eric Clapton." She also enrolled on a cordon bleu cookery course. Friends say that by the time she was in her mid-twenties, she was spending #40 a day on delicatessen food, which she would take home and binge-eat, then make herself repeatedly sick.

It was around this time that Charlotte, now 26, scooped the biggest role of her life. She was cast as Scarlett, the scatty friend of Hugh Grant in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral. It became a worldwide smash hit. Charlotte won a Bafta nomination for best supporting actress.

After that, she continued to take film roles, and develop her interest in Buddhism, but her friends also say that she had started to experiment with crack cocaine towards the end of her life.

Many say they tried to help her, and they lost count of the number of times she vowed to seek treatment for all her addictions. She spent two weeks in rehab at a centre in Kent, but left abruptly to go on a drug binge in Berlin, one friend says.

Despite this, Charlotte landed another big role four years ago, opposite the Irish comedian Dylan Moran in the BBC series How Do You Want Me? But by then the ravages of her addictions were plainly obvious to everyone on set, according to Rod Gilchrist.

By the second series, Charlotte was so thin that the director was forced to shoot around her to disguise her physical frailty.

"She was an extremely sweet and charming person and I liked her immensely," says Gilchrist. "She was also tremendously talented. If she had tried to build on her success from Four Weddings and a Funeral, I have no doubt that she would have been a British answer to Goldie Hawn. But it wasn't to be."

At the time, Charlotte was involved with a drug dealer, according to one friend. "He sponged off Charlotte, broke into the flat next door to hers and squatted there. He sold all her stuff for junk and finally abandoned her a month or two before she died."

Still, Charlotte never lost her ability to delight and charm other people. Just four days before she died, Matt Jones remembers catching a bus with Charlotte, her sister Lisa and her father. Straight away, Charlotte launched into a conversation with an elderly lady sitting next to her. "Within 10 minutes, the two of them were laughing hysterically," Matt recalls. "I don't have the words to describe the effect she had on people. But I doubt that the old woman will ever forget the day she met that dazzling girl."

On November 13, 2001, the evening before she died, Charlotte visited her family and watched a video with them. She was clearly underweight, but her outlook was positive. "She had eating disorders and was thin, but everything was turning out for the better for her," her father said later. "She was doing well. She had a new flat that was painted up and was very nice. There was even talk of her being in EastEnders."

Later that night, though, Charlotte complained to her parents that she felt ill. They asked her to stay with them, but she decided to go back to her flat instead. The next day, her parents rang to check on her, but when she didn't answer the phone her mother grew worried. She went round to Charlotte's north London flat, opened the door and found her daughter lying on the floor. She rang an ambulance and Charlotte was rushed to hospital. But it was too late.

After a post-mortem examination, acting coroner Dr Susan Hungerford pronounced that Charlotte had died from a massive attack of bronchial asthma. In other words, she had suffocated. Her inhaler had been found just a flight of stairs away from where she had collapsed.

Many friends believe her lifestyle was to blame. "She was just so weak and thin," explains one friend. "She put her poor little body through so much. Her lungs wouldn't have been able to withstand an asthma attack."

One week later, at her funeral, her mother read out the poem Life Unbroken by Harry Scott-Holland. She had found the poem in Charlotte's bag; her daughter had been saving it for a friend who had recently suffered a bereavement. Instead, the poem was read out at Charlotte's own memorial:

Death is nothing at all . . .

I have only slipped away into the

next room

I am I and you are you . . .

Whatever we were to each other,

that we are still.

Why should I be out of mind

because I am out of sight?

I am waiting for you for an

interval,

Somewhere very near, just around

the corner.

All is well.

For the thousands of people who loved the irrepressible Charlotte Coleman and her work, there was no better tribute.

This November, in memory of Charlotte, the North London Performing Arts School in Muswell Hill will award the first Charlotte Coleman Scholarship to the most promising young drama student

Why did Charlotte die? (2025)
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