Rebecca Gibney on Her 20-Year Marriage: “It Doesn’t Mean We Don’t Have Issues”

Rebecca Gibney is one of Australia’s most beloved TV personalities.

The New Zealand actress began her career on the NZ young adult series, Sea Urchins , before getting her big break on the classic Australian series, The Flying Doctors.

Over the years, she’s starred in countless Australian and New Zealand TV series, films and stage productions including Halifax f.p , Packed to the Rafters , The Killing Field and Stingers.

Now, she’s taking on a new challenge — hitting the dance floor on Channel 7’s brand new season of Dancing with the Stars .

Here’s everything we know about DWTS’ Rebecca Gibney:

Her difficult childhood and mental health struggles

Rebecca has been open in the past about her difficult childhood that was marred by her father Austin’s abuse towards her beloved mother, Shirley.

The Wanted actress grew up in Wellington, New Zealand, as the youngest of six children. Her father would often arrive home drunk and physically attack her mother.

“On the odd occasion, he beat her so badly she had bruises for six months on her legs,” she told Woman’s Day in 2017.

“I remember [mum] putting us to bed and I quite often would hear dad come home, but she’d always shut the doors leading to the kitchen or the lounge room. So you’d hear the yelling and the shouting and the slapping, but you’d never actually see it.”

Rebecca said her mother did her best to protect her children from witnessing the abuse and from becoming their father’s next victim.

“She would constantly tell us it was not our fault and she shielded us so that when Dad came home he’d beat her up [not us],” she said. “Sometimes she’d wake us up in the middle of the night and bundle us into the car and we would drive around the block and we’d sleep outside. But she made it an adventure.”

Speaking to Stellar magazine in 2023, the actress admitted she became great at pretending to be okay from about the age of 14 until she was well into her 30s.

“When I started talking about my mental health struggles and anxiety… it was a relief,” she told the publication. “I could drop the mask of pretending that I was OK. What I’m loving seeing is that more and more people are now going, ‘I’m not OK’.”

When her father died in 1982, Rebecca started seeing a therapist and working through the impact of her childhood. But she suffered from anxiety and panic attacks for years, often turning to Valium to cope.

“I needed Valium to go to the supermarket. People were staring at me and I’d have to run back inside”, she told The Australian Women’s Weekly in 2019.

Gibney’s family life with husband and son

Rebecca and her husband, Richard Bell, celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary in 2024.

The actress and the production designer met in 2000, while they were working on the set of Magda Szubanski’s television movie, Dog Woman. The pair immediately clicked and in 2001, they tied the knot on a beach in Thailand.

“I had dealt with my past and in walks this beautiful, tall New Zealander who happened to live on the same street as me when I was five. We met in 1999, got together in 2000 and married in 2001 and have been happy ever since,” she later told the Sydney Morning Herald .

In 2021, Rebecca told Yahoo! the secret to their long marriage was “respect”.

“You must respect each other, it’s having complete and utter respect above all else and obviously love and being willing to compromise which is what we’ve always done,” she told the publication. “We are quite lucky because we work together a lot, so we are on the road a lot, and quite often, we’ll find ourselves in beautiful hotels or amazing places for dinner, so it’s easy to keep the romance alive.”

She also told The New Zealand Women’s Weekly that Richard is her biggest source of support and her greatest cheerleader.

“He gets me utterly, and we’re each other’s biggest fans. It doesn’t mean we don’t have issues, but we always work through them because I can’t imagine growing old with anyone else. He’s my rock, and I think I’m his.”

The couple have one child together, 20-year-old Zachary, who is currently studying acting at the Toi Whakaari New Zealand Drama School in Wellington. In 2024, Rebecca announced on Instagram that she and Richard were moving from their home in Dunedin to Wellington so they could be closer to him.

“There have been major changes happening for us. We have decided to leave our beautiful beachside home and head north — to stalk our son,” she wrote on Instagram at the time. “Actually, for a variety of reasons, but stalking Zac sounds better! On to new adventures. Love you Dunners.”

When Gibney was inducted into the Logies Hall of Fame last year, then 19-year-old Zachary introduced her to the crowd.

“The first thing that comes to my mind when somebody says “Rebecca Gibney” is, ‘that’s my mum’,” Zac told the audience. “She’s always just been my mum, so I guess the name Rebecca Gibney doesn’t really mean much more to me than “Mum”. But I do know her name means a lot to other people. To some, she’s an amazing actor. To others, a great friend, a co-worker, a daughter, a sister, and a wife.”

The teenager said he was “so proud” of his mother for reaching such a huge milestone in her career.

“So many people love Rebecca Gibney, the actor. I will always love her as the kindest, most-loving mum anyone could ask for. And, tonight, all of us in this room, and industry, celebrate her. I love you, ma, to the moon and back and I’m so proud of you.”

Why she decided to do Dancing With The Stars

The actress was just about the celebrate her 60th birthday in the UK when she got the call about Dancing With The Stars.

“This little voice went, ‘Yes, give it a go’. I stupidly went, ‘It’s a great way to get fit’,” she told The Australian Women’s Weekly earlier this month. “I forgot the voices that went, ‘This is going to hurt’.”

The Packed to the Rafters star “ate and drank at every restaurant you could think of” in the UK before returning home to New Zealand only to be struck down with the flu. In early January, she arrived in Sydney to start rehearsals.

“By the time I arrived in Sydney on January 6 to start training, I was just not in a good way. But I thought, that’s okay, we’ll ease into it,” she said.

Rebecca has been paired with Ian Waite, the professional dancer who won the 2024 season with actress Lisa McCune.

“I said to him, ‘Look, I’m much older than Lisa and nowhere near as fit, so just be gentle with me’,” she told The Australian Women’s Weekly. “He was so wonderful, but by the end of the second day, I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, this is really going to be hard, ’ and it didn’t get any easier. It didn’t get easier at all.”

The post ‘It doesn’t mean we don’t have issues’: Inside Rebecca Gibney’s 20-year marriage appeared first on Now To Love .