Sherlock actress Amanda Abbington has split with The Queen’s Gambit actor Jonjo O’Neill after four years, telling fans she’s a ‘fragile girl at the moment.’
The TV star, 46, started dating Irishman Jonjo, 42, after she split from fellow actor Martin Freeman.
And Amanda, known for playing Mary Morstan in the BBC series, and Jonjo moved in with one another in her Hertfordshire home during the pandemic last year.
However, Amanda announced the split to fans on her Instagram Live, according to The Sun, saying: ‘ Sadly no Irishman anymore. He’s gone…it’s fine, it’s just one of those things.”
She hinted at her heartbreak by saying she was, ‘very sad for personal reasons’ and admitting she was struggling with lockdown because she was ‘on my own in the house’.
She added: ‘At the moment I’m quite fragile… I’m a fragile girl at the moment.’
Amanda also joked that she had joined a dating app in a bid to combat her loneliness.
She wrote: ‘I go on Tinder. No, I’ve never been on Tinder, nor would I, that was a joke.
‘Being on your own, certainly, you build your strength up and you get a sense of perspective.’
Amanda and Jonjo first began dating in November 2016 – nine months after she secretly split with The Office star Martin, 49.
They first went public in October 2018, when Amanda supported him in a West End showcase of Harold Pinter.
Talking about when they first met, she said: ‘At the end of the night I went up to him and said: “I think we should go for a drink.” He was: “Yeah, OK.”
‘We were following each other on Twitter and it was really nice, but then I met him and it was like: “Oh, you’re lovely. I’ll be brazen”.’
In March, she said lockdown had brought them closer together. He said: ‘We’re enjoying drinking red wine and bingeing on TV series. I’m nearly a married woman.’
Meanwhile, Amanda discussed her split from Martin after 16 years together in an interview with The Sunday Times magazine back in April 2018.
The actress and Martin are parents to Joe, 14, and Grace, 11.
She said: ‘When we broke up nobody knew, we didn’t tell anybody except for a few key people because they had to know, because of the logistics of hotels and stuff.
‘It took six months for it to get out and a lot of that was while we were working on Sherlock… We were professional and we were going to get on and make a show and be civil to each other.
When they broke up, hopeless romantic Amanda was terrified of being a single mother in her 40s and the separation was one of the darkest times of her life.
‘I had thought Martin was the love of my life. This wasn’t meant to happen to us,’ she said in an interview with Red magazine.
‘I would wake every morning with a sudden lurch. “Why do I feel sick?” I’d ask myself, in the darkness of the bedroom I no longer shared with my partner.
‘And then, a split-second later, I’d remember what had happened. “Oh,” I thought, as the tears started to fall. “That’s why”.’
She added: ‘During that long, lonely week, I had to keep things together for the sake of our children, Joe and Gracie, who were then 10 and eight.
‘They needed to be looked after. I had to wake them up and make them breakfast and take them to school and, in a way, the normality of that routine kept me going.
‘It got me up in the mornings.’