The ObserverBeauty'Even in death, Martin has this curing power over our lives'
Actress Natascha McElhone talks about losing her husband, the pioneering plastic surgeon Martin Kelly; and about his legacy, the skin balm Heal. By Eva WisemanNatascha McElhone takes a deep breath, and holds it. When she speaks, the only clue that she's grieving for her husband, the craniofacial plastic surgeon Martin Kelly, is that she finds it hard to say his name. He died, aged 43, in late May, after collapsing with a hereditary heart condition in the doorway of their London home. 'Him. Him...' She sighs, and chuckles quietly.
It's late morning in Los Angeles, and McElhone, pregnant with their third child, has been shooting the drama series Californication, working nights. She put herself forward for an interview barely a month after Kelly's death to talk about the project he was planning to launch: together with five other plastic surgeons, he'd developed a cream. It started as a formula to help patients' skin recover faster post-surgery - now, as Heal, a white floral-scented gel, it's being marketed as a soothing face balm.
McElhone takes another breath. 'Him. Martin - him and his partners from London Plastic Surgery Associates came together to try and make a product that was reliable in terms of its healing powers. So they did lots of experimenting, starting off with a medical gel, which was made specifically for post-surgery scarring. But then in trials they discovered that it also worked for things like sunburn, and bruises, and it had anti-inflammatory properties, too. So then they found a wonderful French chemist, and came up with this.' Another deep breath. I ask why she's choosing to promote the beauty brand so soon after Kelly's death.
'The reason why I'm still fairly invested in all of this is because Martin and I would sit - whenever we had time, usually if we were on holiday and if we had put the boys to bed - we'd sit with a bottle of wine and come up with silly names for the cream. And then we'd test them out in the morning to see if they worked when we were sober.'
The couple were about to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary. They met as teenagers, and married shortly before Kelly moved to Kabul to join a medical charity, working in a tiny hospital on patients with burns and facial deformities. In Kabul he met Hadisa Husain, a four-year-old child born with a full facial cleft - the bones of her skull hadn't fused in the womb, leaving her brain exposed. Her community called her a 'devil child', and the Taliban were preparing to have her stoned to death. Kelly flew her to Britain to be operated on by his colleague Norman Waterhouse (one of the Heal collaborators), the surgeon who will carry out the UK's first face transplant, and together they founded Facing the World, a charity that brings children with severe disfigurements to Britain from the developing world. After the Taliban fell, he went back to Afghanistan and reconstructed noses: the Taliban cut them off people they thought were liars.
As well as his charitable work, Kelly was known as the 'king of rhinoplasty' - he reconstructed Tara Palmer-Tomkinson's nose when it collapsed from cocaine abuse. His obituaries varied. The Star reported, 'Doc to celebs is dead'; the Mirror described him as the 'screen star's hubby'. McElhone wrote her own tribute, a raw and moving piece published four days after his death. 'The love of my life, the cleverest most exciting and witty friend I ever had. It seems he had this effect on everyone who was his friend. You were touched by his fire. It scalded sometimes... I feel so ill-equipped right now in my sleepless, shocked state to write anything coherent, but I want to get in there and shout aloud his name, make sure no one misunderstands him.' McElhone's stepfather, media commentator Roy Greenslade, described the couple as 'star-crossed lovers. I have never known a marriage as close and warm as theirs,' he said.
With her stories, McElhone makes the Heal formula sound like a magic cream, the sort found in fairy tales. 'One of the make-up artists I'm working with cut her arm quite badly, and she had a red raised scar. But after rubbing in the gel, the scar faded to a little white line, and the lumpiness went completely. And my son, who's four, came home from a day camp recently with sunburn. When he was asleep I rubbed the gel into his arms, and when he woke up the redness was gone.'
'Even in death, Martin still has this wonderful curing power over our lives, so I feel quite passionately about it actually.' Again, the quiet laughter. 'Also, I love that this product is called Heal. It's incredibly appropriate for me right now.'
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