Years active: 1995 - present (started around 24 years old; 29 years in the business)
Instagram follower count: 295k (as of December 2024)
About Melanie Sykes
She was the girlfriend of Matt Goss from early 1991, for five years. Sykes married actor Daniel Caltagirone in January 2001. The couple have two sons, born in 2002 and 2004. In July 2008, it was reported that the couple had separated, with Sykes having "grown apart" from Caltagirone, who had moved out of their Hampstead, London home. They divorced in June 2009. Sykes married her boyfriend Jack Cockings on 18 May 2013 at Sherborne Castle in Dorset.
In November 2013, Sykes was arrested and cautioned by police over an alleged common assault against Cockings. Soon after the caution, after less than one year of marriage, Sykes began the process of filing for divorce. The caution was later revoked and deleted from police records, and Sykes has since campaigned for better treatment of women facing domestic violence, including from partners who make spurious allegations of assault so as to legally and financially harm their victims. She has said that the police handled her case badly and misled her into accepting a caution as the quickest way out of her situation.
In November 2021 Sykes received an autism diagnosis, which she said gave her a "deeper understanding of myself, my life, and the things I have endured". Her younger son is also autistic, having been diagnosed at three years old. In July 2023 Sykes revealed she had self-diagnosed with Tourette syndrome.
