Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery engaged to Phoebe Waller Bridge’s brother Jasper

Downton Abbey actress Michelle Dockery has got engaged to Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s brother Jasper.

They have been swept up in a romance since 2019 and have gone public with their exciting news.

Sparks flew when the couple met for the first time through friends.

Their love story blossomed and they made their first appearance together at the Rome Film Festival.

The happy announcement publicising their engagement was revealed in The Times on Thursday.

The announcement read: “The engagement is announced between Jasper, son of Michael Waller-Bridge of King’s Lynn, Norfolk, and Teresa Waller-Bridge of Battersea, London, and Michelle Dockery, younger daughter of Michael and Lorraine Dockery of Gidea Park, Essex.”

To the world Dockery, 40, is best known for her role as Lady Mary Crawley in the ITV period drama Downton Abbey.

Meanwhile Waller-Bridge, 34, has his own ties in showbiz circles.

Of course he has his famous sister Phoebe Waller-Bridge but he also worked at a talent agency and managed the former One Direction singer Louis Tomlinson.

Previously in her love life, Dockery has been engaged once before but tragedy struck when her fiancé John Dineen died aged 34 of a rare form of cancer in 2015.

Two years after his death, the actress revealed the utter devastation she felt and she said she considered herself a “widow” after his death because they were “married at heart”.

Of his death, she told The Guardian in 2017: “I don’t have the vocabulary to describe what it felt like.

“And what it still feels like. It is… Sorry, give me a minute. I’ve never been more committed to anything in my life than to him.

“So at the time everything just shut down. Work, everything. Work didn’t matter. You suddenly become an [oncological] expert. This stuff becomes your world, and that of course was my priority.”