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My two brothers and I grew up in the theater, going everywhere with my parents when they performed.

I was the family alien. Both my parents are quite creative, but I was... appalling... always putting on little shows. I was rather a shy child, not a natural performer, but there was a performative edge to everything I did.

I was born into the most remarkable and eccentric family I could possibly have hoped for.

Being an only child, I didn't have any other family but my mom and dad really, since the rest of my family lived quite far away from London.

I was big and fat and had weird parents.

My parents knew a wider range of people than most, and so we had actors, journalists, politicians, planters, sportsmen and women and business folk all coming in and out of the places we lived in. Although my parents were not wealthy, they lived a legendary and amazingly cosmopolitan life.

I went to a lot of theatre. My parents were very involved with the performing arts. I went to nightclub shows when I was a little girl. We went to Florida and we would go to the Cocoanut Grove down there. We'd go see Lena Horne, Jimmy Durante, Sophie Tucker and Judy Garland.

My parents were both in show business. My father was an actor, my mom an actress, and both singers, dancers and actors. They met in Los Angeles doing a play together and so I grew up in a show biz family.

I had phenomenal parents. They kept me very grounded, and I lived a normal life.

I was used to theatre classes. I studied with my mother; she was a theatre teacher and directed, too, so it was very family-like. Then I studied with a great teacher in Paris, and she was wonderful; she pushed me, but she was a warm soul.