I had an emergency hysterectomy in my 40s, before I was even perimenopausal. Right now I can’t stop eating shepherd’s pie. Then I become sick of it and can never again stomach it. When I get a food crush, I eat the same dish every day for a few weeks – it’s all I want. Stop looking, he said, or it’ll destroy you. I told him it was all-consuming and totally awful. Midway through the meal, Elton John sat down next to me and asked how I was coping. It was the 90s and I was in the papers daily. For too long I looked for it in relationships, before finding contentment in devotion to my children.ĭinner at Donatella Versace’s house stopped me reading stories about me in the press. Losing that unconditional love was palpable. Mum fought the illness for 20-odd years, losing the battle at 53, and with Dad dead I – at 22 – became an orphan. I went on a crusade to work, hoping I could buy her health: I worshipped her, we were inseparable. My mother got sick far too young, diagnosed with terminal cancer at 30. Even when I’ve been going through personal things far too publicly and I wanted to hide under my duvet, I turn up on set – and on time – regardless.

By 15, I was going out to Soho’s Wag Club, partying with Wham!, Madness and Spandau Ballet, but while it was wild, my work ethic never slipped.

If you have a pulse, you go to work – I’ve never taken jobs for granted. He went to prison quite a few times and Mum would never take us to visit him. In the 60s, he worked with both the Kray twins (Reggie was my brother’s Godfather) and their arch enemies, the Richardsons. It’s not that one was better, but going from life with not very much to this extravagant, surreal set opened my eyes to possibilities.ĭad was charming and a genius with numbers – he was also deep in the organised crime world. I loved the fantasy of acting, the contrast of the worlds in which I lived. I remember shyly cowering behind the coal shed as Mum tried to photograph me, but by the age of four I was playing Mia Farrow’s daughter in The Great Gatsby. We grew up without money: two rooms and an outside loo.

Fallout shelter a cry for help