{"id":795398,"date":"2026-10-08T01:02:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T01:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/795398\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T01:02:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T01:02:11","slug":"jason-watkins-pays-emotional-tribute-to-late-daughter-maude-on-her-18th-birthday-we-will-never-stop-loving-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/795398\/","title":{"rendered":"Jason Watkins pays emotional tribute to late daughter Maude on her 18th birthday: \u2018We will never stop loving you\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Actor Jason Watkins<\/a> has remembered his daughter Maude on what would have been her 18th birthday.<\/p>\n

The Crown<\/a> star lost his daughter, aged two, with wife Clara Francis, to undiagnosed sepsis in 2011.<\/p>\n

Sharing a photo of her to Instagram, the Bafta<\/a>-winning actor wrote: “Maude would have been 18 today. This is the most grown up photo I can find of our beautiful girl, striding across the lawn.<\/p>\n

“Today, she would have been about to jump into the world.<\/p>\n

“Who knows what she will have done with her precious life.<\/p>\n

“How would she have strode through it? She would have met people, and loved them, and been loved.<\/p>\n

“She could have made her own world \u2013 and changed the world too.<\/p>\n

“Made her own ripple, large or delicate, that would have touched and rocked so many; Every new day, she would have nudged another’s in to joy \u2013 as she did with us, when she was here.<\/p>\n

“Now today, as an adult, what waves she would have made..what love she will have given.<\/p>\n

“The love we would have given in return, has never stopped.<\/p>\n

“We will never stop loving you. Never stop imagining you with us Maude. You are loved, my sweet, sweet girl..xx.”<\/p>\n

Watkins and his wife are patrons of Child Bereavement UK.<\/p>\n

Watkins admitted he found it difficult to return to work after the loss during an interview with the <\/a>i.<\/a> in 2025.<\/p>\n

“I was thinking, ‘What is the point of this pretending?'” he said.<\/p>\n

However, although he continued working for financial reasons, he says it doubled up as therapy.<\/p>\n

“I think it was being somebody else or having somebody else’s thoughts,” he said. “It was work that was all-consuming.”<\/p>\n

Watkins paid tribute to his daughter at the 2015 Baftas while accepting the award for leading actor for his role in The Lost Honour Of Christopher Jefferies.<\/p>\n

He said at the time: “If there is a reason why I’m standing here it is because of our Maudie, so thank you.”<\/p>\n

Watkins has two other children with Francis and two older children with his first wife, actress Caroline Harding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Actor Jason Watkins has remembered his daughter Maude on what would have been her 18th birthday. The Crown…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":795399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-795398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=795398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/795399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}