Keeley Hawes has confessed she ‘cannot bear cooking’, opening up about the surprising foods she dodges at dinner. While the actress, 49, acknowledged she isn’t ‘very sophisticated’ in her tastes, she simply ‘doesn’t care’ about a very popular staple.

“I don’t really care about rice,” she admitted in a candid chat with Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett on Waitrose’s Dish podcast. “It’s just taking up space on the plate. It doesn’t really taste of anything.”

Seemingly surprised by this, Angela then jumped in with a foolproof tip for ‘guaranteed great rice’. Although it is certainly an investment, she claimed that everyone has told her to buy a rice cooker for improved dishes.

But Keeley had another idea in mind. “Yeah, or you’re guaranteed great rice if you just get one of those two-minute packets and do that and put it into the microwave,” she said, to which both presenters laughed.

Keeley believes her distaste for cooking arose during childhood, with her family also lacking enthusiasm for mealtimes. Her mother in particular was notorious for overcooking vegetables, often sticking them on the hob for four hours at a time.

Instead, microwave dishes were all the rage, with the appliance deemed a ‘big sexy new thing’ in the kitchen. This meant that quick ready meals, ‘chicken Kiev balls’ and other ‘tinned things’ like beans were all part of her childhood diet.

“I think that’s part of the problem,” the star, who played DI Lindsay Denton in the Line of Duty, continued. “Because I grew up really in the eighties, I was born in 1976, I grew up during the eighties, and cooking wasn’t, it wasn’t a thing, was it Angela?”

Fast forward to now, Keeley’s favourite foods consist of toast, pasta, beef and, perhaps more surprisingly, sour Jolly Ranchers. Thankfully, her husband and fellow actor Matthew McFadyen, completely loves cooking and usually takes control in the kitchen.

Her 20-year-old daughter, Maggie, is also a ‘really good cook’ and ‘keeps [things] going’ when Matthew isn’t around. The pair are also proud parents to Ralph 17, while Keeley is the mother of Myles, 24, from her first marriage.

Matthew, who played Tom Wambsgans in Succession, previously told CBS that although he loves the children, he is looking forward to the moment they leave the nest. “It’s like a third act,” he told the publication.

“It’s exciting. We’re like, ‘OK, mini-breaks!’ In the trenches when they’re little, it’s like, ‘This is it for ever’, but of course it’s not. Then you realise, luckily, ours are really lovely, funny humans who are making you laugh and telling you off.”

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