Fiona Shaw says she ‘met her life’ the day she first spoke to wife Dr Sonali Deraniyagala

Fiona Shaw gushed about her wife Dr Sonali Deraniyagala, saying when they met for the first time time it was as if she ‘just met [her] life.’

The Killing Eve star, 61, has been happily married with the author, 56, since 2018, and she talked about their first encounter in an interview with The Daily Express on Thursday when she initiated the meeting after reading Sonali’s book Wave.

Sonali’s memoir detailed the tragic loss of her husband, children and parents during the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, which Fiona was so moved by she knew instantly that she wanted to speak with the author. 

Fiona explained: ‘I was so surprised she was that person, not the person in the book. We spent half an hour chatting. And when I left I thought, “I have just met life”.

‘When I met Sonali my name was up in lights on Broadway – the pinnacle of what actors want. But I was so weary of the entire thing. 

‘I was tired in my bones and I didn’t want to say it to anyone. So maybe this was at the right moment.’

Fiona went on to explain that she knew soon after meeting Sonali that she wanted to live with her, and was delighted when she discovered that the economist thought the same way.

The actress described their relationship as a ‘beautiful thing’ to happen to her in later life, as she claimed Sonali brought ‘everything to [her] life’ like companionship and laughter. 

In an interview with Good Housekeeping in April, Fiona claimed it ‘took a very unusual person’ to marry her as she detailed her and Sonali’s home life.

‘I’m married to a very unusual person, but maybe it took a very unusual person to be willing to marry me,’ she said.

‘Sonali’s children, parents and husband were all killed in the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, and I’m very cognisant of that. 

‘Its sorrow doesn’t dominate our life, but it definitely defines it. I understand the value of things by being with Sonali.

‘She lives knowing that at any moment the world could end because she lost her world. It has brought me into land, I suppose, about lots of things; a lack of arbitrariness about life,’ she concluded.

The couple now have homes in Islington, north London and Chelsea, in New York’s Manhattan district. 

Sonali was on a Christmas break in her native Sri Lanka along with her economist husband Stephen Lissenburgh, their sons, Vikram, five, Nikhil, seven, and her parents Gemini and Edward. 

They were staying at the Yala Safari Beach Hotel in the south of the country, which was directly in the path of the tsunami.

As they spotted impending giant waves surging towards them, Sonali and her husband grabbed their children, rushed out of the hotel and attempted to escape in a jeep, not even having time to collect her parents from a nearby room.

As the family tried to race away they became submerged in a 30 feet wall of water.

Tragically, she was the only one who survived. The bodies of Vikram and her parents were found several days after the tsunami while Stephen and Nikhil were discovered months later in a mass grave and were identified through DNA tests. 

The devastating loss sent Sonali into years of depression during which time she contemplated suicide and also abused alcohol and prescription pills, as she confessed in Wave, a moving memoir she wrote in 2013 about her struggle to come to terms with what had happened. 

The book won a host of awards and was described by some critics as one of the best ever written about coping with tragedy and family loss.

In addition to her heartache, it also contains extensive sections of the happy family life Sonali enjoyed, from her son’s obsession with cricket and wildlife to spending moments with her husband and their holidays in Sri Lanka.