In their own words: Hollywood's mothers and daughters
- Published
Debbie Reynolds, who starred opposite Gene Kelly in the 1952 musical Singin' in the Rain, died of a suspected stroke just a day after her losing her daughter, the Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher. She had reportedly told her son: "I miss her so much... I want to be with Carrie." The pair were estranged for a decade, and Fisher admitted in a 2011 interview: "I didn't want to be around her. I did not want to be Debbie Reynolds' daughter" - a situation her mother called "very painful, very heartbreaking". However, the pair repaired their bond and became so close in later life that they moved in next door to each other and filmed an HBO documentary, scheduled to air in March, about their relationship.
Melanie Griffith shot to fame in the film Working Girl, while her daughter Dakota Johnson plays Anastasia Steele in the racy film-of-the-book Fifty Shades of Grey. The pair made headlines at the 2015 Oscars after an intensely awkward red carpet moment where Griffith admitted she had not seen her daughter's Fifty Shades turn, and Johnson snapped, "Alright! You don't have to see it. Jesus Christ!" It seems to have been a blip, though. In February 2016, Johnson told Vogue her mother is "an extraordinary actress", and Griffith declared, "I am really, really proud of her".
Melanie Griffith had a famous mother of her own - Tippi Hedren, the archetypal Hitchcock blonde. Asked about her, Griffith once said that while Hedren was filming The Birds, she thought the famously difficult director was taking her mother away from her. "Suddenly, I wasn't allowed even to visit my mom at the studio," she rued. But Hedren always supported her daughter's career. In June 2016, she told the Telegraph she was thrilled to be heading an acting dynasty, saying, "Isn’t it awesome? And I didn’t push for it, ever. I came home one day and Melanie said: 'Mom, I’ve got a job'."
Lookalike mother-daughter duo Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson, who starred in First Wives Club and Almost Famous respectively, are never short of a kind word for each other. Hudson, herself a mother of two, has called Hawn "my great confidante", saying, "I pretty much tell my mom everything!" She also called her mother's relationship with actor Kurt Russell, "rare and beautiful, and something to strive for". On Hudson's 37th birthday, Hawn shared a photo of her daughter as a baby and called her "a shining light full of joy".
Best known for her role in the Hitchcock classic Psycho, the late Janet Leigh was also mother to actress Jamie Lee Curtis. In a 2010 interview, her daughter called her "intoxicating", but noted that her mother struggled with her body image. She said about an unedited nude shoot: "By acknowledging my own changing body, I rebelled against my mother’s fear of it." The True Lies actress recreated Leigh's iconic Psycho shower scene in September 2016, posing for a black and white photo. Posting the snap on social media she captioned it, "Honoring the Royal legend that is/was/will always be, Janet Leigh."
Actress Natasha Richardson died after a skiing accident in 2009, aged just 45. She was the daughter of theatre legend Vanessa Redgrave and director Tony Richardson, and wife of actor Liam Neeson. After Richardson's death her mother, a six-time Oscar nominee who had lost her brother and sister the same year, spoke of "both glorying and grieving". "You're grieving because you haven't got them any more, and you're glorying because you're taking in what a gift each of them was," she said.
French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, daughter of Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, followed her mother onto the screen and her father into music at the age of just 12. Gainsbourg has described her upbringing as happy but highly unconventional, saying: "I'm sure I would have liked to have seen my parents more. And at that time, we did come second. But I like to think of them in Paris, having fun, not thinking too much. And it was a different time."
Pictured in 1960, Wizard of Oz star Judy Garland and her daughter Liza Minnelli, had a complex relationship. Minnelli reportedly believed her mother was jealous of her professionally, and struggled through Garland's drug and alcohol abuse and 23 suicide attempts. For her part, Garland yearned to be a good parent and sought therapy to avoid repeating what she saw as her own mother's mistakes. "In an effort to learn why I had never been able to get closer to people, I took a series of psychoanalytical treatments," she once said. "I'm sure psychoanalysis has helped a great many people, but for me it was like taking strong medicine for a disease I didn't have. It just tore me apart."
US actress Blythe Danner, known for her roles in the sitcom Will & Grace, and for co-starring opposite Robert De Niro in the Meet the Parents franchise, has an Oscar-winning daughter - Gwyneth Paltrow. Danner, who won praise for her 2015 film, I'll See You in My Dreams, has said she hopes her daughter will return to their craft soon. "I've learned a lot from her," she told ITV's Lorraine programme. "She's an extraordinary mother and such a brilliant actress. I'm hoping as the children get older she will come back to [acting], because to me there's no-one like her, she can do anything."
The most toxic mother-daughter relationship in our line-up is that of screen siren Joan Crawford and her adopted daughter, Christina, who would go on to become a TV actress. One of five children adopted by Crawford, Christina wrote a 1978 memoir titled Mommie Dearest, in which she branded the actress a violent, drink-addled abuser who was more concerned with celebrity than her family. The book spent 42 weeks at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Christina said in 2008: "It was the hypocrisy of it that was so difficult. People fantasised about who or what I was; that I had this privileged, wealthy, film-star family life. I didn't have any of that." The damning portrait of Crawford is not universally accepted, though. Two of her other adopted children, twin sisters Cathy and Cindy, have insisted that their mother was a firm but loving parent.
- Published29 December 2016
- Published29 December 2016
- Published29 December 2016
- Published29 December 2016
- Published27 December 2016
- Published27 December 2016
- Published27 December 2016
