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I had a very distant relationship with my father. It was always just me and my mother. It was a shattering blow when she died. I was 16.

My father passed away in 2002, but yes, we were pretty close. I loved him a lot.

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.

My father and my mother separated when I was two.

I had an older brother who passed away recently, an older sister and a younger brother.

At the age of 62, my father died of cancer - it was much too soon. My mother never remarried or got over it, never even thought of another man.

I had a very difficult relationship with my father, which ended up okay, but there were many difficult years.

For 20 years, my mother, my sister and I had seldom spoken of my father. If he happened to come up in conversation, pain and embarrassment entered the room and stayed until he disappeared back into the silence with which we all felt more at ease.

My experience, with both my parents, is that grief has a lot of down, sad things, but I was also really emotionally raw, in the first year after each of them passed. Flowers smelled more intensely, my relationships were hotter, and I was more willing to risk. I was going for it a lot more. I was 'unsober' and I wasn't playing by my rules.