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AFTER starring opposite Tom Cruise and Ryan Gosling, Hannah Waddingham has had more than her fair share of heart-throbs this year.
But the Ted Lasso actress admits she is still holding out for another — to be her real-life boyfriend.
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In her most revealing interview to date, she confessed she has not been out with anyone in years, saying: “It’s so long since I had a first date, I honestly can’t remember.”
The British star, who caused a huge stir with a surprise appearance on The Voice on Saturday night, last had a boyfriend in 2022 before splitting from Italian businessman Gianluca Cugnetto.
They had been together for a decade and were rumoured to have been engaged.
Hannah, who joined The Voice as a guest mentor for Tom Jones, revealed her love life was now “dry”.
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She said: “I’m so busy and just a bit picky.
“I want a guy that scoops me up and goes, ‘I’ve got you, I don’t care if you’ve got your make-up on or not, I’m happy to lie in bed with you and have Marmite on toast and a glass of milk’.
“And just be a lovely positive, charismatic soul.
“I’m 50 and I’m like, ‘Dude, if you are not going to step up, step off and be gone. Sod off until someone fabulous comes along’.
“I’d rather hang with my girlfriends and gay friends and be respected.”
Admitting she has no idea why her romantic life had hit such a dry spell, she detailed the two things likely to put her off a potential partner.
“What’s my deal breaker? I’m going to be very basic — a bad kiss. You know that nothing else works, nothing else is going to work.
“But also eye contact, eye contact is key.”
Hannah also ruled out a man with “a sweaty palm” but added: “Honestly, it’s so long ago, I can’t actually remember.”
Although she has never been married, Hannah revealed she was once engaged to an unnamed man, thought to be Gianluca, but ditched the wedding plans after being disappointed by “bland” wedding dresses that did not suit her curvy figure.
She said: “I think it’s why I’ve never got married because I was engaged once, and I put on all these wedding dresses and I was like, ‘Oh, this is pedestrian’. I mean, it was so bland.
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“If I was going to do it, I would be in a bikini on the beach — a white bikini on the beach.”
Hannah began dating Gianluca in 2012, after meeting him through a mutual friend. They have daughter, Kitty, who was born in 2014 after a struggle with fertility issues.
The couple were last seen together in April 2022 at the Olivier Awards in London. Hannah has never spoken out about the break-up but in 2023 she said her “primary function is being a single mama”.
Fizzled out
She was briefly linked later that year to singer Alfie Boe, a long-term friend, after they were seen together on a number of occasions while she prepared to present the Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool.
But a few months later the relationship had “fizzled out”.
Hannah said she would be open to dating another celebrity and revealed that when it comes to celebrity crushes, she has the hots for actor Sam Rockwell.
Talking to the Table For Two podcast, released last week, she said she would love to work with the Green Mile and Iron Man 2 star “if I could stop gawping at him in a different way”.
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She added: “He is almost aggressively, revoltingly talented and unfortunately very taken.”
When it comes to romance, Hannah reckons looks are not the main attraction.
Instead, she likes her men to be “charismatic, joyful, kind, twinkly and silly”.
She says: “I’m a pretty picky girl really and have such a very specific kind of criteria for things.
“One of the main things with guys, just come on man, positivity — positivity and charisma and I’m your gal.
“But there’s an awful lot of misogs (miserable old gits) out there. I don’t need it.”
She added: “I don’t go much on stereotypical cutey pie, whatever, sexy, whatever.”
I feel if I didn’t have those two I would die on the spot
Hannah Waddingham
While romance eludes the sought-after star Hannah, who released a hit Christmas album last year, is focusing on her “baby girl and music” ahead of a man.
She added: “I feel if I didn’t have those two I would die on the spot.”
She also has her film career to keep her busy.
This year she appeared with Ryan Gosling in the Hollywood movie The Fall Guy as well as getting a part in the eighth Mission: Impossible film, opposite Tom Cruise, which is set for release in 2025.
Hannah’s route to the top has not been an easy one.
She has previously spoken about how her 5ft 11in height lost her numerous roles because producers did not want to cast her opposite shorter male stars.
One of her first breaks was in Benidorm, which she joined in the fifth series, playing Tonya Dyke.
But she revealed tottering around in a bikini led to her being persistently “groped”.
“I’d never been groped in my life.
‘Nothing like Rebecca’
“But I was groped three times in one week in Benidorm,” she says.
“To get on set, I had to walk through the hotel dressed as Tonya in some non-existent bikini and high heels with blokes gawping at me . . . or rather groping me.
“I had to stop myself doing what I’d instinctively do — knock their blocks off — because I was working.”
In 2016, she was cast as Septa Unella in the fifth season of Game Of Thrones and then went on to get the role of AFC Richmond owner Rebecca Welton in Ted Lasso in 2020.
Hannah says Rebecca was a part she could identify with, and slip into more easily than any other she has played — but still insists in real-life she is nothing like her.
Hannah said: “I can literally think as her and think as me, like on a dime. There’s been plenty of times when people have said, ‘She’s you, Rebecca Welton’s just like you’.
“I’m nothing like Rebecca. But I can slip into her. It’s like sliding doors. It’s just who you could have been in a different life.
My primary function is being a single mama
Hannah Waddingham
“I like playing characters who are that slight slice of who you could have been, should we have taken different choices.”
Hannah’s part in Ted Lasso has proved so popular that she has been nominated three times in the Emmys, for the Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy, and won once.
Now she has landed a role in the upcoming Christmas animation Tiddler.
With work all over the globe, she is often torn away from her South West London home and daughter Kitty, and has previously spoken about her “mum guilt”.
Hannah told presenter Michelle Visage: “She said, ‘Mummy, we were talking at school about who inspires us and I said Harry Styles . . . and you’. I went, ‘What, me?!’ Joking. I mean, I was slightly gutted about getting second billing.
“I said, ‘Baby girl, you have made my day, my week, my month and my year, because you know Mummy struggles being away from you.”
However, she has said Kitty will always remain her priority.
“My primary function is being a single mama,” Hannah says.
“I keep saying to her that we are a team and that I have to do this. I have to strike while the iron is hot.
“I’m not so conceited that I would think that I will always have this kind of focus.
“I’ve always said to her, ‘Mummy must take this time while the light shines on me, because the light shines on you.’”
