Lady Frederick Windsor Calls the Royal Family’s Lives ‘Total Hell’: ‘That Level of Unasked-for Fame Is a Form of Torture’

Sophie Winkleman may have married into the royal family, but she isn’t a huge fan of the senior royals’ lifestyle.

While speaking to U.K. newspaper The Times, the British actress, 45 — who tied the knot with Lord Frederick Windsor, the son of Prince Michael of Kent, Queen Elizabeth’s first cousin, back in 2009 — said, “The more I get to know the royal family, the more I get that their lives are total hell and that level of unasked-for fame is a form of torture.”

Sophie continued, “None of them went on [the U.K. reality music competition] Pop Idol or something to be famous. To have that sort of blinding spotlight in your face from when you’re born, not knowing quite whom you can trust, not knowing if someone’s going to betray you, people writing lies about you the whole time, is just brutal.”

Lady Frederick Windsor, whose acting credits include Peep Show and Two and a Half Men, continued, saying, “I feel for them all. I don’t think a life with that much scrutiny and pressure is remotely healthy, but they have no choice.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Sophie also mentioned her marriage to Lord Frederick, admitting, “I didn’t know anyone at my wedding. I had my best pals there, but basically it was full of faces I’d never seen before.”

Lady and Lord Frederick share two daughters — Maud, 12, and Isabella, 9. The family of four regularly joins the British royal family at events, including Kate Middleton’s annual Christmas carol concert in December.

Sophie’s interview with The Times wasn’t the first time she’d mentioned her and Lord Frederick’s nuptials, as she opened up about her special day in a previous interview with The Telegraph, which was published back in May.

She told the U.K. newspaper, “It was such a blur because we had to move to Los Angeles the day after [the wedding], and I had to start a brand new job the day after that.”

“So we got married on Saturday and moved everything, our whole lives, out to America the day after. And I’d been so concentrating on the work that I hadn’t thought about the wedding,” Sophie continued.

“Which meant that my hair was so disgusting, and Freddie still gets upset about it,” she told the outlet. “It was just disgusting.”

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Sophie added that her mother-in-law, Princess Michael of Kent, chose her bridal gown, “which was very sweet and puffy, but I looked barking.”

“She sort of took it all over, and I actually didn’t mind at all. I thought, ‘Great, do everything,’ ” she recalled. “I was concentrating on this acting job and saying goodbye to my darling granny, who wasn’t very well, and just doing other stuff. But now I look back on it and think I should have worn a simpler dress, and I should have got my hair blow-dried by someone who’d done it before.”

Despite all of this, Sophie insisted she’s a big fan of her husband’s side of the family, telling the paper, “Family isn’t always brilliant, but this lot are very sweet. I love all of them.”