Emilia Fox has played a wealth of characters on stage and screen, but her latest role as a real-life mum facing a terminal cancer diagnosis marks one of her career's most moving feats so far. For the actress, who is mum to six-year-old Rose, filming was a deeply personal experience. "In a way it highlighted things for me," she told HELLO!. "You feel it all anyway as a parent, about one's own relationship with one's family, but this certainly made me think about [my daughter] and realise one should never take it for granted."
Mum's List follows St John Greene (Rafe Spall), known as Singe, as he deals with his the death of his beloved wife Kate and faces raising their two sons, Reef and Finn, without her. He finds solace in Kate's List – a compilation of her thoughts and memories left to help them cope after she is gone.
CLICK TO VIEW GALLERY
Emilia Fox has opened up about her emotional role in Mum's List
Based on a true story, Singe and his family regularly met the cast to help them in making the film. "The family was with us the whole way through the shoot," Emilia said of their "massive" input.
"Singe and I sat in a pub for hours and I asked him a lot of questions about each scene of the film, because I wanted to know where Kate was emotionally and physically. It was an awkward thing to ask someone to talk about, but Singe is so generous. He was very open, he said it was okay to talk about anything - and then we cried a lot."
The actress stars opposite Rafe Spall
The Silent Witness star also shared her hopes that Kate would be proud of the film and how it brought people together.
She said: "Even though Kate would never have known this was going to happen, she was preparing for the future for the boys and Singe, everyone wants to be part of their future - which means that Kate is omnipresent always. You definitely feel that, and I think that's an amazing thing. It feels like she almost lives on," she said.
Mum's List is out in UK cinemas now.