Inside EastEnders' Anita Dobson's life with rock star husband (2025)

EastEnders star Anita Dobson has had a very successful acting career

Anita Dobson, 75, is best known for her role as Angie Watts, the first landlady of The Queen Vic, in EastEnders. She portrayed the emotionally drained and struggling alcoholic Angie from 1985 to 1988, becoming an icon of the BBC soap.

Angie's tenure was marked by her tumultuous relationship with husband Den Watts (Leslie Grantham) and their adopted daughter Sharon (Letitia Dean). In a bid to break up Den and his mistress Jan, Angie falsely claimed she was terminally ill and had only six months to live.

This led Den to temporarily end his affair with Jan and vow to spend Angie's final months with her. However, Angie's lie was dramatically revealed during a journey on the Orient Express, leading to one of the show's most memorable moments.

The 1986 Christmas Day episode, in which Den served Angie with divorce papers, remains the most-watched soap episode in history. Angie left Albert Square in 1988 to join her lover, Sonny, in Spain, later moving to Miami and remarrying, reports Plymouth Live.

Ultimately, it was her alcoholism, not Den, that led to her demise; Angie died of cirrhosis of the liver in 2002.

In a life away from the soap drama of Walford, actress Anita found her personal fairytale with rock icon Brian May. The couple met in the 1980s and later got married in an intimate registry office ceremony in Richmond upon Thames, London, back in 2000.

Reflecting on their first encounter, Anita shared with the Daily Mail: "He invited me to see Queen play at Wembley, with some friends. Meeting my husband opened a door to a world I'd hitherto only dreamed of. Here was a man who was a god globally."

They honeymooned in Venice, where they were blissfully happy and where they return each year. In 2020, Anita saved her husband's life after he suffered a heart attack.

She initially brushed it off, thinking the rockstar had just over-exercised, telling The Daily Mail: "He said, 'Babe, I think I'm having a heart attack', I said 'No, you've been exercising and you've overdone it'."

At the time, the famed guitarist was on the mend from a torn muscle and a trapped nerve - injuries sustained whilst gardening. But his recovery took a dire turn as he then experienced the heart attack.

Reflecting on the incident on BBC Morning Live, Brian expressed: "She did save my life. I had this whole cluster of things go wrong. It was a good job it was lockdown in a way but I was incapacitated with the heart attack, complications from the drugs, then I had sciatica so badly. I couldn't even crawl."

Reflecting on his health journey, he expressed deep gratitude for his partner's support: "'So when you get that bad, you're just grateful to be alive at the end of it and its thanks to Anita that I am, she's been there the whole way through it. She's taken care of me and nursed me and whatever."

A seasoned actress beyond her EastEnders fame, Anita has a rich portfolio of TV appearances including roles in Dangerfield, Ghosts, Sunburn, Hotel Babylon, Holby City, The Bill, and comedy series 'The Rebel' on Gold. Her stage presence is equally impressive with performances in Chorus Girls, Chicago, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Wicked.

She also showcased her dancing talents on 'Strictly Come Dancing' in 2011. More recently, Anita took to the screen as Eunice Lytton in the 2025 edition of Father Brown, and was busy last year with parts as Janine in Generation Z (2024), Janet in Curfew (2024), Mrs Flood in Doctor Who, and Mrs. Mentis in the film This Time Next Year.

Anita made a momentous return to the set of EastEnders after 37 years as the BBC soap celebrated its 40th anniversary, reuniting with Letitia Dean who plays her on-screen daughter Sharon Watts. Anita will feature in Ross Kemp's one-off documentary special which marks the soap's significant milestone.

Don't miss EastEnders: 40 Years on The Square, airing on Monday, February 17 at 8pm on BBC One, where it will dive into some of Walford's most iconic moments and groundbreaking storylines from across four decades.

EastEnders airs Monday to Thursday at 7.30pm on BBC One and iPlayer