The 59-year-old 101 Dalmations star, actress Joely Richardson, has admitted her relationship with her legendary mother is complicated.
“My mother is an inspiration and she’s a pain in the arse” she laughs.
“I love my mother. She’s a great and challenging friend.
“I think all family relationships have all colours.
“It’s never like ooh, we get along and we bake cakes.
“We’ll have a great big barney and then we’ll be like children laughing on the grass.”
After their lockdown at Joely’s Surrey home she laughed “God, I was ready to move on from that.”
Growing up Redgrave was often absent from the family home as she was so devoted to her political causes and Joely said it was her older sister, the late Natasha Richardson, who looked after her.
“The family dynamic when we were growing up was that Tash had always been the brilliant coper.
“We rarely saw Mum so she’d be busy, filling the fridge, doing all the cooking.”
After Natasha died in 2009 Joely took over the “matriarch role” adding “for my sister’s funeral I had to borrow her shoes..and then I had to step into them.”
But she says she admires her mother, still treading the boards in her eighties.
Joely says her mother’s “extraordinary spirit bounces on.”
“I find that inspiring. If I ever have half my mother’s spirit, oh my God, I will be happy.”
