Who Was Douglas Henshall First Wife

So, you’re curious about Douglas Henshall’s first wife. The man who brought us the brilliantly grumpy Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez in Shetland—a guy so good at looking windswept and brooding that we’d gladly follow him into a peat bog. But before he was solving murders on a remote Scottish island, Douglas had a whole other life, including a marriage that most people have never heard of.

Let’s get one thing straight: Douglas Henshall is not the kind of celebrity who plastered his love life all over the tabloids. He’s more likely to be found talking about the weather or a good book than his ex-wives. So tracking down the story of his first wife requires some light detective work—fitting, right?

His first wife was the lovely Tena Stivicic. Yes, that’s a mouthful—think of it as a Croatian tongue-twister that ends in a friendly handshake. Tena is not an actress or a model, which makes her even more fascinating. She’s a Croatian writer and translator, meaning she probably spends her days wrestling with sentences in multiple languages—while Douglas wrestled with sheep and suspects on screen.

How Did a Scotsman End Up Married to a Croatian?

This is where the story gets delightfully random. Douglas met Tena while he was in Croatia working on a theater project in the early 1990s. That’s right: before he was haunting the moors of Shetland, he was haunting the stages of Zagreb. Imagine him wandering around in a coat that looked slightly too big, trying to understand the local dialect and accidentally ordering a plate of pickled cabbage instead of coffee.

They fell in love, because that’s what extroverted Scots do when they meet a Croatian intellectual—they get married. The pair tied the knot in the mid-1990s, and for a while, they were a low-key, arty couple living in London. You know, the kind of couple who probably had bookshelves full of Croatian poetry and argued about the correct way to make raki (a fruit brandy that will strip your sinuses).

But here’s the kicker: they were married for less than five years. That’s barely enough time to finish a theater run or learn to spell "Stivicic" without cheating. By the late 1990s, the marriage was over. No messy scandal, no crying in the rain—just two people who realized they were better off apart. Douglas himself has said it was a "very amicable" split, which in Hollywood-speak means "we still share the same favorite coffee shop, but now we each pay for our own latte."

Who is Douglas Henshall's wife Tena Štivičić? | The US Sun

The "What Happened to Tena?" Mystery

After the divorce, Tena Stivicic fades into the beautifully private backdrop that only a Croatian writer can. She’s not on Instagram bragging about her ex-husband’s TV fame. She’s probably sitting in a café in Zagreb, sipping espresso, and writing a novel about a grumpy detective who moved to a remote island. (I made that last part up, but wouldn’t it be brilliant?)

Here’s a surprising fact: Tena is actually a published playwright and translator. Her work has been performed in theaters across Europe. So while Douglas was winning BAFTAs and getting his hair blown around by Shetland’s wind, Tena was winning applause in entirely different languages. She’s the kind of ex-wife you don’t see in the tabloids—which is exactly the kind of ex-wife you want if you’re a private actor like Douglas.

Did This Marriage Shape His Career?

Let’s be honest: probably not in a dramatic way. But I like to imagine that his time with Tena gave him some serious emotional depth. How else do you explain the way he can stare at a dead body on Shetland with such profound sadness? He’s channeling the memory of arguing about Croatian grammar at 2 a.m.

Photo de Douglas Henshall - Mariage à l'anglaise : Photo David Kane

Plus, marrying a Croatian writer probably taught him to appreciate complicated stories. Maybe that’s why his characters always seem to be carrying a little extra weight—like a backpack full of unanswered questions and Balkan poetry. And let’s not forget: if he hadn’t gone to Croatia for that theater project, he might never have met Tena. Without that experience, he might have been a duller actor, and we’d have been stuck with a Jimmy Perez who just complained about the rain without any existential angst.

The Takeaway (Because You Deserve a Conclusion)

So, who was Douglas Henshall’s first wife? She was Tena Stivicic, a Croatian writer who married him at the height of his theater-nerd phase and then gracefully exited stage left. No drama, no tell-all interviews, no "my ex-husband once left the toilet seat up in Zagreb" stories. Just two creative souls who shared a few years, realized they were better as friends, and then went on to do cool things separately.

In the end, Douglas found lasting love with his second wife, actress Caroline Burn, and they’ve been together for what feels like forever. And Tena? She’s still out there, probably writing a play about a Scottish actor who forgets to buy milk. It’s a quiet, dignified, and slightly hilarious footnote in the life of a man who made us all fall in love with the wind-scrubbed beauty of Shetland.

And that, my friends, is the answer to your burning question. Now you can go back to watching Shetland with the smug satisfaction of knowing that even grumpy detectives have ex-wives who can outwrite you in two languages. Brilliant.