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My education was paid for by the RAF Benevolent Fund, so a charity school, run like an orphanage, with uniforms and beatings. It was tough, but it got me to Cambridge - like being a chrysalis suddenly becoming a butterfly.

I had to leave school at 14 because my father got injured in the mines and I had to support my family. I was an undertaker's assistant, then a plasterer, before doing my military service in the RAF. All the while, I was doing amateur dramatics and dreaming of getting a scholarship to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

I was eleven, then I was sixteen. Though no honors came my way, those were the lovely years.

My childhood was bittersweet in many ways. We moved around a lot. By the time I was 10, I had travelled thousands of miles, often on my own. My parents were like my friends, so it felt like I didn't really have parents at all. But in a crazy way that was very liberating. It forced me to be independent, maybe a leader, and certainly a survivor.

I was the seventh of nine children. When you come from that far down you have to struggle to survive.

At an early age, I quit high school at 17 and joined the Air Force.

Becoming a mother was the single defining event of my life. It felt like the whole world shifted.

When I was rising eighteen I persuaded my parents to let me return to Australia and at least see whether I could adapt myself to life on the land before going up to Cambridge.

Before it was decided that I was going to be adopted, my mother was going to abort me. I was born with tangled legs; they never thought I'd be able to dance... without knowing it, as a child I overcame a lot thanks to really doting, loving parents and a great family and a hard work ethic on my part.

I went through some real challenges growing up. I joined the Army two weeks out of high school when I was 17, and never looked back.