Hairdressers call me dark blonde, but I think they’re wrong. I feel far more naturally confident blonde. My mum’s blonde, my sister’s platinum blonde. I thought, ‘When I grow up, that’s what I’m going to look like.’
I love Karl Lagerfeld. I worship him. I was brought up in Paris, and my mum used to wear a lot of Chanel. I love the brand.
My mum was very conscious about fashion, and my dad was born into the tailoring tradition, so fashion has always been my life, although now, really, I wear the same thing – just in different weights – light and heavy cashmere in winter and cotton in summer. And jeans.
My dad is the first to say that Mum deals with the mortgage payments, the bills, the rota, things like that, while my dad is the emotional one who keeps the home together. He’s the nurturer, but together, they work perfectly.
She was just Ma, and I didn’t grow up in some kind of acting dynasty: Orson Welles didn’t come round and give me a piggyback; Vivien Leigh never read me a bedtime story. It was just my mum and our housekeeper, whom I adored, and after that, it was boarding school.
My Italian granny and my mother made great spaghetti, but it wasn’t a kind of southern Italian, Godfather-esque kind of thing – it was a wonderful, big mixing pot of all kinds of people – when you came home from school and your mum wasn’t in, there were lots of people you could go to.
There are things about my mum that I only realised later, things that make me admire her.
My father walked out on us when I was three months old, and my mum, well, she wasn’t the driven sort.
If I hadn’t gone to dancing school, I would have married and had children like my mum and had a normal life.
Mum and I were delighted to find out we were descended from ‘bog-trotters.’
My mum was a single mum on the dole.
Often as a child you see someone with a learning disability or Down’s Syndrome and my mum and dad were always very quick to explain exactly what was going on and to be in their own way inclusive and welcoming.
My mum keeps telling me to stop getting tattoos but I’ll get a few more sneaky ones in.
I’ve had dogs all my life. I’m a huge animal lover, especially dogs, so that’s one of the hardest things about being away all the time. I really miss them, but my mum does a really good job looking after then when I’m gone.
My first mentor and inspiration was my Irish Dancing teacher Patricia Mulholland. She created her own form of dance known as Irish ballet and created stage productions of old Irish myths and legends. They were my first experiences on stage. She told my mum I was destined for the stage, and I took that as my cue.
When Dad passed away, grandpa took on that mantle of teaching me how to tackle at football or taking me and mum to cricket.
I remember seeing ‘Aladdin’ when I was five or six and loving it. I looked at the big screen and said to my mum, ‘Whatever this Genie guy does, I want to do.’ Mum said I couldn’t be a genie, but that Robin Williams, who did the voice-over in the film, was an actor. So I said, ‘OK, then, I want to be an actor.’
Every year since I was very small, my family – Mum, Dad, sister Charlie-Ann and brother Stephen – and I have been holidaying in Carvoeiro in the Algarve, so that has very fond memories for me.
I always wanted to play a dapper gentleman, and I also always wanted to play my mum.
I always wanted to be a writer, from being a little kid onwards. My dad and my mum both had phases when that was what they did.
The biggest musical influence on me was my mum. We were both enraptured by music.
I remembered moving from Sacramento to Los Angeles with my mum when I was seven and my sister was three or four.
My mum used to wear the guys’ Chesty Bonds tanks, and I used to end up wearing them after she’d finish with them. She’s a painter, and they would be covered in paint splatters. She would wear them and wear them until they were super-soft, and then I’d get them. But I was just a kid, so they were like a dress on me.
I’m very nurturing. I come from a large family, and my parents were loving. But the most important thing for me as a mum is to keep my word. When I say no, I mean no.
The first time my mum and dad went to the theatre was at my drama school in third year.
I was definitely incredibly close to my dad, in a way that was all-encompassing. I am close to my mum, too, but there were areas that she and I did not share. So his loss to me was huge, personally and professionally. He believed in me, not just as a father, but as a director, and that always meant a lot.
I love heels. I remember the first time I saw a pair of heels my mum said: ‘You’re not wearing those. They’re too high!’
There was a time when my mum would sew costumes for the dance studio so we could keep doing our classes because we couldn’t afford them.
I was so anxious for it to be my turn, for the manager to read the letter from my mum. I waited and waited for it. The manager had spoken to the mothers of every player in the team; he’d been reading a message before every game for months, and finally my turn had come.
I’m into everything. My iPod is very eclectic – if you kept it on shuffle, you’d be amazed. For example, I was forced to grow up on Dolly Parton. My mum was obsessed by her. She bought all this memorabilia for the front room. It’s ridiculous.
My dad was in the Indian Army. He died in a terrorist attack in Kashmir in 1994. After that, my mum and I settled in Noida. I went to Delhi Public School in Noida and then to Shri Ram College of Commerce in Delhi University. It was in college that I realised I wanted to be on the stage and in front of the camera.
My mum was a librarian, and my dad worked in Greenland.
My mum, she has a very specific way of mixing bourgeois and hippie. She doesn’t wear a lot of make-up, but she always has to wear glasses, and she has this huge collection of glasses. And no rules.
What makes me happy is having a really nice day out with my mum, or getting better at something I’ve been working hard at.
I went through a stage of writing my cramped hand in tiny books. My two sisters and I did have our Bronte period. My mum is from Yorkshire, and we would go up to the Moors. It tapped into our romantic visions of ourselves.
I am really lucky with my skin. It comes from my mum. Fashion tip from Cherie: drink lots of water.
Watching Mum work hard made me do the same. I’ve watched her since I was little, and I’ve picked up on how hard she works and the fire she has in her belly.
On the one hand, I’ve had such a normal upbringing with my mum, who has kept me grounded, but on the other, the wild experiences through my dad.
Before, I guess, mum and dad were everything, but now, in my case, I had two new girls and all of a sudden they’re completely dependent on you and there’s a third generation. It’s a funny shift all of a sudden. You have the babies, you have yourself and then you have your parents.
I try to help my mum as much as I can by not being rebellious.
The four rings on my wedding finger are all very significant – my wedding ring, my mum’s wedding ring and the engagement rings of my granny and mother-in-law.
I think my mum wanted me to join the army or something, or become a surveyor – something with good career prospects.
I had a complicated life until I was 25. I was born in Bristol and was brought up by my mum and my stepfather in Edinburgh. He introduced me to books.
In school, all my teachers and my mum were super routing for me to study at Oxford. I picked music as a career choice, and this didn’t sit too well with them!
My mum’s maiden name was Dalglish, so I have Scottish blood in me.
I’m just delighted that this woman I love can be a mum again.
When I was a kid, my mum had a lot of Dumas books in the house, and she’s from France originally. My mother had one particular Dumas book that was a family heirloom – this old, beat-up 1938 edition of ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ in French. She came to America after losing her parents in World War II as a little kid.
I got into hip hop from my uncle; he was always playing us Kool G Rap and Big Daddy Kane. He was a bad boy, and my mum was not really happy that I was hanging out with him.
Both Mum and Dad were converts to Catholicism, and normally if you convert to Catholicism you have thought about it more than someone who just grew up with it, taking it for granted.
When I was young, my parents were these titanic, infallible figures. But Mum’s illness and Dad’s battles with diabetes and heart attacks had a ripple effect on me – reminding me of my own mortality and that these illnesses are genetic.
I’ve got two brothers and there was a male dog and two male cats and every family we knew had three boys. Great for us, slightly less great for my mum.
My mum and dad ran a family cafe in Sligo for 35 years and worked long hours. We grew up in a very hard-working family and had a lovely atmosphere, as we lived above the restaurant. It definitely made me want to work hard, whatever I chose to do. As the baby of seven kids, I was definitely a bit spoilt.
I was always pretty ambitious, although it probably helps that I can’t do anything else – apart from cleaning lavatories. But I remember my mum once said, ‘I suppose you’ll give it a year and see if you can make it as an actress?’ And I said, ‘No Mum, I think I’ll give it 10.’
