Siobhan Finneran's unusual living arrangement with Death in Paradise star partner revealed

Siobhan Finneran is back on our screens as prison chaplain Marie-Louise O'Dell in the third series of the BBC's acclaimed prison drama Time. In the new instalment, she's joined by David Tennant, who plays Bobby Bailey, a veteran officer in the midst of his own crisis when tragedy strikes at the young offender institution. 

Siobhan, 60, is no stranger to gripping TV dramas, having starred in Happy Valley, The Reckoning and Protection. As viewers get stuck into the new series of Time, find out all you need to know about her life off-camera, including her famous partner.

Siobhan's family life

When she's not busy filming her next big TV hit, Siobhan lives in Saddleworth, Greater Manchester. She was raised in Oldham to Irish parents. Her mum was a primary school teacher while her father worked a number of different jobs, including driving a cab.

"I was born in Manchester and I was brought up in Manchester for the first few years of my life," she told the RadioTimes. "My mum's of Irish and Scottish descent, but she was born in Salford and her family are Mancunians."

Siobhan shares a daughter and a son, Poppy, 26, and Joseph, 28, with her ex-husband, fellow actor Mark Jordon. 

After welcoming her children, Siobhan took a step back from her career. "You sometimes look back and think, yeah, I made a decision not to work when the children were small," she previously told The Guardian. 

"But I don't think I'd made a decision. I think there probably wasn't a lot of work coming in, and that just fitted in quite brilliantly with the fact that I had two kids under the age of two," explained the star.

Siobhan's famous ex-husband

Siobhan married actor Mark Jordon in 1997. The couple were together for 17 years until they divorced in 2014. Mark, 61, is best known for playing Phil Bellamy in the police drama Heartbeat – a role he held from 1992 to 2007.

Viewers will also recognise Mark for playing Daz Spencer in the ITV soap, Emmerdale. His other TV credits include Coronation Street, Casualty, Doctors and Hollyoaks. More recently, he portrayed Ray Wood in the ITV drama, The Long Shadow. 

Siobhan's famous partner

Siobhan is in a relationship with actor Don Gilet, best known for playing DI Mervin Wilson in Death in Paradise, as well as for his roles in EastEnders and Sherwood. 

The pair first worked together on the 2017 thriller, The Loch, and began dating around a year later. 

Siobhan confirmed her relationship in a 2025 interview with The Guardian, in which she referred to Don as "my fella". 

While Siobhan lives in Saddleworth, Don lives in north London. Explaining how they navigating living apart, the actress told The Times last year: "That's just the way it is, isn't it? That's how it's always been. And he's out of the country for seven months a year doing Death in Paradise anyway."