His dad’s a Prince – and Lord Freddie Windsor has plenty of reasons to celebrate at this moment in time.
The minor British royal, 32nd in line to the throne and son of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, (the latter also known as “Princess Pushy”), became a father for the second time two months ago when his actress wife Sophie Winkleman gave birth to their second child, a daughter Isabella, who joins their two-year-old girl Maud.
The happy family radiated domestic bliss posing in a series of pictures for British society bible Hello! On the surface it completes a remarkable turnaround in fortunes for 36-year-old Freddie who at the turn of the century was frequently in the British tabloids for drink and drugs episodes highlighting an expensive but misspent youth.
But his happiness is bittersweet. The Windsors have recently moved back to London from Los Angeles and the move has not been without regret and recrimination on Lord Freddie’s part. Windsor does not do too badly for himself- he is a Vice President at JP Morgan Chase, a job he has retained in Canary Wharf, East London.
But sources say Freddie left LA unfulfilled- he desperately wanted to make it in Hollywood as a movie producer.
“Freddie was advising wealthy clients on their investments but he kept trying to broker film production deals,” says a source. “He would manage family wealth portfolios but that’s not where his heart lies. The joke was that his business card read [Hollywood agency] CAA and not Chase.”
Windsor, who worked as a movie executive in his twenties after a stint as a music journalist on British society magazine Tatler, did have some success on the film front. He advised up-and-coming director Matthew Ross on the financing for his upcoming film Frank and Lola starring Michael Shannon and Imogen Poot. But sources say he had a hard time getting other passion projects off the ground.
“Freddie kept having meetings with producers and directors in LA to discuss projects only to walk out of the room deflated at them expressing most enthusiasm in producing documentaries or dramas about his family,” a source says. “But he had zero desire to do that and once again become the royal black sheep.”
At the same time Windsor’s wife, Sophie Winkleman wanted to be a leading actress in Hollywood. She had some success in England- including playing a scheming Princess in fictional trashy royal family drama The Palace, prior to her marriage- but she was hungry for stardom.
Once ensconced in LA, Winkleman landed a guest role on hit CBS sitcom Two and a Half Men but it was in the series’ home stretch after Ashton Kutcher had replaced Charlie Sheen. “Sophie did just fine,” a friends says, “but the plum Hollywood roles she came over to LA to land never materialized. She was ready to return.”
More so, friends say, than Freddie. While he is still working for JP Morgan Chase’s East London office, he pocketed a tidy sum, said to be $85,000, from selling the rights to Hello! magazine for the spread.
The royals distaste for members of the firm cashing in on exposure in society rags is compounded in this case by Sophie Winkleman’s indiscretions about Prince William and Kate Middleton’s son Prince George of Cambridge. “We were invited to tea at Kensington Palace just before Princess Charlotte was born,” gushed Sophie. “Maud and George got on very well. He’s a very clever, articulate little boy and was speaking long before other toddlers his age.”
Freddie is understood to have needed the Hello! moolah to subsidize the expensive lifestyle favored by both his wife and his mother Princess Michael of Kent who half a decade got a nasty surprise when her rent living in sumptuous surroundings in Kensington Palace increased to $200,000 a year up from the special grace-and-favor $100-a-week that “Princess Pushy” had previously been paying.
But while Freddie might not have a film credit to his name, he has turned out a lot better than predictions made a decade-and-a-half ago when he was a decadent royal punchline. He admitted to using cocaine on the London party circuit and Prince Charles was reported to have kept his sons Prince William and Prince Harry away from their relative. The hellraising culminated in him being pictured passed out at the London premiere of Madonna’s flop 2000 film The Next Best Thing.
Life is a good deal more normal now for Lord Freddie Windsor these days. His dreams of being a movie mogul might have died but he will have seen enough films to know that dreams so often do.
