Chris O’Dowd and Dawn O’Porter: Inside Their Relationship

She’s the wife of a Hollywood actor but Dawn O’Porter is open about the reality of making ends meet.

Getting candid during the Friday, July 25, episode of the “White Wine Question Time” podcast, the author, 46, detailed the financial struggles she’s experienced while being married to Irish actor Chris O’Dowd.

Revealing that she works “paycheck to paycheck” and considers herself “always broke,” Scottish-born O’Porter admitted that her credit card was recently declined and feels that some years are “an absolute disaster” from a money perspective.

The writer, 46, also noted that when she met the Bridesmaids actor, the pair were in very different career stages. “My TV career had just gone. I was so poor. I was so upset. I had zero confidence. I didn’t know what I was going to do,” O’Porter said on the podcast. “I’d just met Chris, and he was on this trajectory up. I thought, ‘Well, maybe this is just it. I’m just a girlfriend, and that’s it.’ I went to all these events with him. … I always thought, ‘If I was in this position, it would be because I deserve it.’”

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Requesting that she and O’Dowd, 45, plus their two young children, leave Los Angeles to live in London in 2024, the writer noted that the move allowed her to find her feet as a magazine columnist before driving momentum as an author.

Keep scrolling for more insight into the pair’s romance over the years:

Dawn O’Porter Rejected Chris O’Dowd’s Facebook Friend Request Multiple Times

O’Dowd, who rose to fame in 2006 after appearing in the British comedy series The IT Crowd, said during a December 2024 appearance with O’Porter on the “Table Manners” podcast that he struggled to connect with her on social media. “I sent a couple of friend requests on Facebook,” he said at the time, per the Daily Mail. “Dawn said no a couple of times, and then she was short on numbers for her birthday, so invited me along.”

They Met Through Another Hollywood Star

O’Dowd and O’Porter were both living unattached in Los Angeles when the actor asked Shaun of the Dead star Nick Frost if he “knew anybody in town at the moment,” per the “Table Manners” podcast episode.

“He said, ‘Oh, you should look Dawn up. I know Dawn a bit and she’s a good crack,” O’Dowd recalled during the interview.

One of Dawn O’Porter’s Books Was Inspired By the Couple’s U.K. Return

During a September 2024 interview on the U.K. chat show Lorraine, O’Porter confirmed that the story of “Honey Bee,” one of her fictional novels, reflects her own experience of returning to the U.K. after living in Los Angeles for 16 years.

“After the pandemic … you really weigh up where you are in the world and where you want to be, so the main reason we came home was we want to be close to family,” she explained, as captured in a Youtube video of her Lorraine appearance. “But I can’t deny that I was starting to find America really unsettling. The anxiety of America was becoming quite unbearable. I left before I didn’t like it anymore. It was an amazing 16 years.”

Dawn O’Porter Felt ‘Crushed’ at the Height of Chris O’Dowd’s ‘Bridesmaids’ Fame

Discussing the promotional activity she took part in during the aftermath of O’Dowd’s turn in Bridesmaids, O’Porter said during her Lorraine appearance that despite the period feeling “wonderful,” it was the first time she had entered such high-profile situations. “It wasn’t glamorous,” O’Porter explained. “At the time … I’m so proud of Chris, but it feels weird doing all that not for your own achievements. I was so young and consumed with my success that I didn’t take a beat to go, ‘Well this is also a great success [for O’Dowd].’ ”

Dawn O’Porter Has a Sensible Perspective on Marriage

The author shared her secret to a successful marriage during an interview with The Independent in 2022. “Don’t expect it to be perfect all the time. That took me a long time to learn,” O’Porter told the outlet at the time. “Sometimes, it will be stressful and hard, but as long as the majority of the time it’s not, I think you’re doing pretty well.”