Rowan Atkinson’s Daughter Breaks Silence on His ‘Dark Divorce’ That Left Their Family Shattered

Rowan Atkinson’s daughter, Lily Sastry, has spoken publicly for the first time about how her parents’ divorce threw her into a spiral of “darkness and chaos,” admitting it took her years to find her feet again.

The Mr Bean star, now 70, split from his wife of 24 years, Sunetra Sastry, in 2015. At the time, Sunetra was granted a quick divorce on the grounds of Rowan’s “unreasonable behaviour.” What followed behind the scenes, though, was a lot more emotional than fans might have imagined – especially for their daughter Lily.

Now 30, Lily has dropped her father’s surname and taken her mum’s, saying she struggled deeply in the aftermath of her family breaking apart. Reflecting on those years, she opened up online: “I went through so much chaos and loneliness in my twenties. Now I am 30, I can see clearly where I was at and what was happening inside me during the darkest days.”

Lily described a profound sense of not fitting in anywhere, writing: “I have always been trapped between worlds; do not belong here, but also don’t belong there.” She also admitted she felt completely lost in the years that followed, reported the Mirror.

Trying to figure herself out, she experimented with burlesque dancing, then moved into music, and most recently, into the art world. Her debut exhibition launched in December. In a candid Substack post, she said: “It’s hard to find out who you are in the midst of no friends, a broken family, and no idea how to navigate making music and trying to understand the world.”

Art, she said, became her lifeline: “Art was my guiding light. The thing that made all the suffering worth it; as I was working towards a goal, a dream.”

After the split, Rowan moved on quickly. He began dating actress Louise Ford, 44, shortly after the divorce was finalised, and even moved her into his £4.65 million home just weeks later. The two had met on the West End stage in 2012, and they welcomed their daughter Isla in 2017.

Louise, who’s known for playing Kate Middleton in The Windsors, had previously been in a relationship with comedian James Acaster. He found out she’d left him for Rowan through a newspaper – a full year after they’d split. In a stand-up show, James quipped: “I got dumped for Mr Bean,” adding, “No one else in the history of time has ever been left for Mr Bean.”

He joked that Rowan’s character seemed to pop up everywhere after that: “There’s a shop two streets from my house that sells masks of his face. There’s nowhere where I’m going to go that he’s not there.”