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.
