Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Please continue to respect all commenters and create constructive debates. He is now a computer … "Being a spurned woman – it wasn't something that I had particularly experienced in my own life," she says in a matter-of-fact rather than a defensive or show-offy manner. Poppy said it was awful. Anna, 45, granddaughter of the 4th Baron Hylton, is getting ­married on Sunday to her longtime partner, Algerian-born former minicab driver Redha Debbah, who is seven years her junior. "I was supposed to be doing my A-levels but I didn't really do that," she says. "I think my key attribute was that I was always open-minded and always interested, even when it looked like everything was going very bad, I don't think I got bitter. To add insult to injury, a signed autograph of Tony Blair went for thousands. And although she won't thank me for doing so, it's worth quoting in part. Eventually my mother realised I was literally roaming around London.". "I was called Questulor Rontok [in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy], Hope Goodgirl [A Touch of Cloth], Carmen Svennipeg [Staggered] and Lix Storm in The Hour. Sent to boarding school at seven, convent at 11 (cue Chancellor breaking into song: a snatch of Frank Zappa's "Catholic Girls"), Chancellor arrived back in London as a clueless, somewhat disorientated 16-year-old. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. ", Did she read Benson's novels as research? I was always up for life, interested in other people, interested for new experiences. You've worked hard all your life to be an actress, or whatever you've done, and that is what's presented to you. "It was quite funny, our relationship," says Chancellor of Poppy, now an artist and illustrator in her twenties. The subject of her horrified incredulity is a section headed 'Family', in which Chancellor's purported lineage is set out in considerable detail by Wikipedia's anonymous genealogist. ", There were tough times as a largely unemployed actor (Chancellor had by this stage graduated from drama school, but was eking out a living as a life model) and single mother in Shepherd's Bush, before Shepherd's Bush became even remotely desirable. "I lived with my great aunt and uncle in Holland Park Avenue, and I was meant to be at college, but it was massive. "Maybe I seem too combative." Our journalists will try to respond by joining the threads when they can to create a true meeting of independent Premium. Was there – post Four Weddings perhaps – a time when Hollywood came calling? "About 10 years ago I went with Redha to see if I could get a job in Los Angeles and I'd had my hair done and spent all this money on trying to look good and the American guy interviewing me went, 'Oh my God, you English girls are so great but you just don't care what you look like'... "But who knows? "She's horrible isn't she?" "But when I saw it acted, I was so taken up with how clever everyone was... how you'd have a whole episode about whether Lucia had pretended to do a drawing or not, and you might think, why would anybody care? As you do. "It would be churlish to mind – and you can't mind something that you can't change – and it's much worse in other languages. Are you sure you want to mark this comment as inappropriate? You can find our Community Guidelines in full here. That's why I get annoyed by that [Wikipedia], if you think that's the sum-total of Anna.". Create a commenting name to join the debate, There are no Independent Premium comments yet - be the first to add your thoughts, There are no comments yet - be the first to add your thoughts. Mapp and Lucia: How to best the ultimate social snobs, You may not agree with our views, or other users’, but please respond to them respectfully, Swearing, personal abuse, racism, sexism, homophobia and other discriminatory or inciteful language is not acceptable, Do not impersonate other users or reveal private information about third parties, We reserve the right to delete inappropriate posts and ban offending users without notification. Then she began a relationship with Redha Debbah, the Algerian-born minicab driver who would take her to work in the West End. "I found my life quite tough to be honest with you. Until Four Weddings and a Funeral, Chancellor's main claim to fame had been a sci-fi soap opera, Jupiter Moon, in which she played a character called Mercedes Page. Her uncle is journalist Alexander Chancellor … her six-times great-aunt was author Jane Austen. Want an ad-free experience?Subscribe to Independent Premium. It might be more accurate to say that she is a fully paid-up member of the great Metropolitan melting pot, living in Acton in west London with her second husband, Redha Debbah, a first-generation Algerian immigrant whom she met when he taxied her back and forth from a West End play 17 years ago. I adored her. Anna Chancellor’s partner Redha Debbah was in their kitchen in west London when somebody rang from New York to say she’d been rushed to …