I was living at home until about 27 and decided it was time to move out and move somewhere else, so that’s what I did. I wanted it to be the right thing to do. I didn’t want to buy something out of my price range; I didn’t want to be stupid with my money, so I decided to stay at home. Luckily, my mum and dad were amazing.
My mum and dad teach, and all my brothers and sisters have been in ‘Riverdance’ and so forth. So I was forced to become a dancer; it’s part of my family history.
My mum and dad are pretty amazing chefs and they spent most of my childhood cooking really extravagant things for my sister and me.
I wasn’t a happy kid. I felt like my mum ruined our chance of a better life, because when she remarried, we went to live in Bahrain, on a compound with a swimming pool, and she ruined it all.
I’ve had to ban my mum from coming to see me play. She gets so nervous before any show. I’ve always got a few nerves but she’s so much worse than me. You’d think she’d be able to handle that kind of situation. After all, she is a concert pianist.
I really thought I couldn’t be a mum. We had tried several times with IVF,, and it hadn’t worked and we’d given up in a way. We both thought, ‘You know what, that’s that. It’s not going to happen – let’s move on.’
Losing my mum. That was a punch-me moment.
I don’t agree with the whole ‘my mother’s my friend’ approach, because you’re their mum and there has to be a difference between the generations.
I get a lot of single mum roles – ‘It’s a Free World’ turned out well, so people thought, ‘She can be a single mum, Kierston can do that. Or live in a council house – she can do that.’
My mum calls my temper ‘Devilman.’ They say you calm down with age, but I don’t know. It never goes away.
My mum’s always had big aspirations because I’m an academic. I always got good grades at school. GCSEs were just a breeze for me.
I read a lot of research notes about the countries I visit, and my mum and dad bought me a Kindle, but I’m still getting to grips with it. I prefer paper books.
Acting is something I’ve done since I was six years old, performing for my mum and my family in the living room, and I do it because my heart’s in it.
We went to Ibiza, and I was on Ritalin, and, for a kid who couldn’t concentrate, I read a 200-page book on King Arthur, and my mum just hated it. She said it just wasn’t me.
My mum raised me on ‘On the Waterfront,’ ‘Gone with the Wind’ and ‘Rear Window.’
My mum and dad are both sportspeople and know what’s it all about. They know it’s hard work, but they also know what it takes to become a professional athlete. I don’t think – without their help, I wouldn’t have got this far.
My mum is a lovely woman, so strong but so kind and compassionate. She brought us up to be proud, loving and forgiving.
My mum was a music teacher. I’ve got three sisters, and we all played instruments when we were kids.
I’m one of five kids and we lived on a massive farm in New South Wales with my mum and dad.
Roses are my favourite flower, and my mum always grew a lot of them.
I ended up in Broadmeadows orphanage – I don’t know how that happened – whether she gave me up for adoption or the church was responsible. Whatever happened, she was a single mum.
I think the first album I bought was The Jackson Five, but the first CD I was given was ‘Cotton-Eyed Joe,’ the single! Bless my mum – don’t know what she was thinkin’!
My mum wouldn’t do a film for money. She does it as a passion. That’s why she’s involved in things that are so brilliant. She really cares about what she does.
My mother says that after I first visited the home of the man I later married, she knew it was serious when I told her, ‘Mum, he has more books than me!’ So, books are at the very heart of my life.
My mum’s a bouncy, energetic, driven, crazy woman, and my dad’s very relaxed, doesn’t say much. I have the best of both worlds in my personality.
And my parents’ separation was tricky. But my mum had always been really honest with me, and treated me like an adult even when I was really young, so I knew they hadn’t been getting on.
Personally, I had a great education. My mum was a trained teacher, a Montessori teacher, and I know that I could not have written ‘Eragon’ if I had gone into a public school system because I would have just been too busy attending classes and doing homework – I wouldn’t have had the time to write.
I take my hat off to mums who have lots of kids. Anyone that says being a mum isn’t a full-time job has obviously never had any.
I’m determined not to start dressing like I’m 45 years old now that I’m a mum.
My mother always spoke to me in English, so it’s technically my maternal language, and it became a kind of private language – I was happy that I could speak in English to my mum and the majority of people wouldn’t understand it.
I experienced the sharp end of a tough time, living with a single parent, my mum, and she was really struggling to get a job. These are the things that form your views in life. They are established when you are growing up and being raised. That stuff doesn’t really go away; that stays with you.
Once I remember shouting, ‘Mum, can I get a pound for an ice cream?’ and she said, ‘I haven’t got a pound, Kyle.’ People take so much for granted, but I will never forget that.
I had my footballing heroes such as Bryan Robson and Diego Maradona but my dad was a rugby league star, and he was my real hero. But the relationship with my mum was rocky and we saw things that would affect any youngster.
Awards go up at Mum and Dad’s, but home is home, and I don’t like to bring the office home.
I saw ‘The Exorcist’ at the cinema when I was quite young, maybe 14. When I went back home, my mum and dad weren’t in, so I had to wait for them on the main road. I were too scared to enter the house.
I don’t think of myself as an actress. I still think I’m fannying around in my mum’s front room.
Mum was a big style icon for me: her natural sexiness and natural confidence.
They had asked for me because they wanted a younger girl, but Mum asked if she could bring Kylie along because she didn’t want there to be any jealously.
I think there’s always interest in how the other half live – I see myself as a down-to-earth Essex mum who just happens to be living this very glamorous life in Beverly Hills.
When I’m a mum, I’m not going to be one of those mums who has nannies. Actually, I might have nannies – never say never – but I’m not having someone else raise my kids.
I’m afraid that this is me getting on my high horse now but we have yob television, yob newspapers, and funny enough whereas it was my mum and dad, school, police, church who used to set the standards, now it’s tabloids and yob television who set the standards by which people live.
My mum and I do cardio kickboxing classes together.
I used to get my money at the end of the week, buy my mum something, or buy a record, and that was it.
I get to have Sunday lunch at my mum’s, pick my nephew up from school now and then: it’s a very normal life.
I am a mum – I want to give my kids confidence, but limit it because no one wants arrogance.
My mother worked when I was growing up, so I was under the impression I’d find it easy to be a working mum. But I found it very hard to be away from my family, even for short periods of time.
I have never been insecure, ever, about how I look, about what I want to do with myself. My mum told me to only ever do things for myself, not for others.
My friends used to call me ugly. Even my mum would say it.
The ‘Pride and Prejudice’ with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle was something I watched on a weekly basis with my mum at home in Oxfordshire.
Mum was an absolutely determined woman. She was determined I would have a good education, and they went without all sorts of things to ensure it.
I know I can count on my mum and brother to be there for me through good and bad times.
I was around 15 when I first wanted to compete in an Olympics. I even remember the first time I got to wear a GB kit as a junior. I’ve even kept it. It’s in my mum’s loft somewhere, probably gone mouldy by now.
My mum thought my TV and film addiction was laziness. If you’re an immigrant, you know you’ll never be an accepted part of society, but you hope your children will be, and you try to make them essential to the community in a practical way – being a doctor or a lawyer. Acting was beyond their comprehension.
I don’t let other people tell me what to do. Well, unless it’s my mum.
I want to make my mum’s life and my life safe.
My role as king will be much like my mum’s as queen, so long as I remain in tune with the people.
My mum has a cupboard in her house, and you have to fight an avalanche of tea whenever you open it. I go through eight teas a day because I like having something in my hands when I’m working, and it stops me going for the cookie jar.
When I was ten, I went to seven schools in one year in Nova Scotia. Me and my mum moved there so that I could be closer to my dad, who is an ice-truck driver, but it didn’t work out.
My mum came to the set of my second movie ‘Connie and Carla,’ and she had made food for the whole cast, including mini bun cakes with little flowers sticking out of each one.
