For Sienna Miller, there’s more than a month of memories she can’t remember from performing in As You Like It back in 2005.
That’s because she was simultaneously facing, in her words, “public heartbreak” at the “height of all that paparazzi madness.” Fifteen years ago in July 2005, the actress was performing in a West End production of the William Shakespeare play—her first—when she was on the receiving end of an infamous public apology from her then-fiancé Jude Law.
“Following the reports in today’s papers, I just want to say I am deeply ashamed and upset that I’ve hurt Sienna and the people most close to us,” the actor said in a statement at the time, following the breaking news that he had cheated with his children’s nanny. “I want to publicly apologize to Sienna and our respective families for the pain that I have caused.”
Meanwhile, Miller, then just five films into her career, had many more weeks of performances to forge through. ”That was one of the most challenging moments I hope I’ll ever have to experience. Because with that level of public heartbreak, to have to get out of a bed let alone stand in front of 800 people every night, it’s just the last thing you want to do,” she told The Daily Beast in a newly published interview. “It was really hard. And the other thing was, it was at the height of all that paparazzi madness, and in London where there was an epidemic of bad behavior. They knew where I would be every night.”