Cold Feet star may quit acting for family life

Cold Feet star Helen Baxendale said today she was considering quitting acting to devote more time to her family.

The 33-year-old said she has reached “an impasse” in her career after finishing filming the final series of Cold Feet in her role as Rachel Bradley.

She says being an actress keeps her away from home and the two children Eric, 18 months, and Nell, four, she has by her partner, producer David Elliot.

“I really don’t feel much of a pull to go back to work,” she told Now magazine.

“It’s a difficult one because I don’t want to end up with no career. I just don’t know.”

The Birmingham-born actress, who also starred as Emily in American sit-com Friends, said working hard meant she was missing out on valuable moments in her children’s childhoods, such as bath times and bedtimes.

“In the end you have to make a choice about what you want most,” she said.

“It’s not fair on my children, it’s not fair on their dad and it’s not fair on my parents, who’ve been brilliant.”

Miss Baxendale’s first major TV role was as Dr Claire Maitland in BBC hospital drama Cardiac Arrest in 1994.

She played lawyer Lorna Johnston in Truth or Dare in 1996 and Cordelia Gray in PD James’s An Unsuitable Job for a Woman before landing the part of Emily, Ross’s English girlfriend, and later wife, in Friends.

The final series of Cold Feet begins on ITV1 on February 23.