Inside Lily Allen’s troubled childhood
Lily Allen may be known for a tough exterior and a take-no-nonsense mantra, but the singer and actress has also revealed moments of raw vulnerability since first stepping into the spotlight more than 15 years ago.
The mother-of-two, 39, has revealed with heartbreaking honesty that she had children for ‘all the wrong reasons’ as she searched for ‘unconditional love’.
Lily shares daughters Ethel, 13, and Marnie, 11, with her ex-husband Sam Cooper. Allen is now married to Stranger Things actor David Harbour.
Speaking on her podcast Miss Me? on BBC Sounds which she co-hosts with childhood friend Miquita Oliver, she said: ‘I think I had children for all the wrong reasons really because I was yearning for unconditional love, which I haven’t felt in my life since I was a child.’
Allen has long been candid about the struggles she faced in childhood and how it continues to affect her today; and her fractious relationship with her father, actor Keith Allen, 70, in particular.
British singer Lily Allen has opened up about the reasons she had children after struggling with feeling ‘unconditionally loved’ following her childhood. Pictured with her father Keith Allen in 2007
Soon after Lily’s birth, Keith began an affair with a brigadier’s wife who lived near the set of a film he was working on in Dorset. By 1989, the marriage to Alison had run its course and he walked out on her, when his daughter was four.
Lily has previously said of her childhood: ‘One of my earliest memories is of when Mum and Dad split up. We were in our council flat in Bloomsbury and Dad was saying: ‘Me and Mum are splitting up now.’
‘I was about four and I was thinking: ‘Does that mean we’ve got to look for a new dad?’ It was very hard for Mum. She was producing her first film and my younger brother, Alfie, was a difficult kid.
The singer, 39, shares daughters Ethel, 13, and Marnie, 11, with her ex-husband Sam Cooper and candidly revealed how she hoped pregnancy would help her pause her career and fix a love which she ‘hadn’t felt since being a child’ (pictured in 2022)
‘I just lived within my own brain. I had this blanket and I’d suck my thumb and watch the world go by.’
In 2015, Lily also tweeted: ‘My dad walked out on me when I was 4, I’m sick of this. My dad was at Latitude when I headlined and didn’t even come to see me. I’ve probably spent more time walking my dogs than I have with my dad my entire life.’
Speaking to the Guardian in 2018, she also spoke of the difficult times she experienced with her mother following the split.
When the singer was eight years old, she walked into the bathroom to find Owen on the floor with empty bottles of alcohol and pills around her, as she screamed. She was taken to rehab shortly afterwards.
The singer, who is now married to Stranger Things actor David Harbour, has two children with her ex, Sam Cooper
The singer has recalled how Keith walked out on her and her brother Alfie (pictured) when she was just four years old
The singer has also revealed the better times she has shared with her father, including trips to football matches in her teenage years.
‘I was close with him and in my teenage years I really wanted to forge a relationship with him so I used to go and watch Fulham play every Saturday with him and his mates and things were really good at a certain point,’ she has said.
Even in adulthood, the singer continues to have a fractious relationship with her father.
In 2018, she revealed an argument she had had with Keith following an episode she shared about him in her memoir, which he claims she misremembered.
She revealed Keith had been left fuming when she claimed he’d suffered a ‘cocaine-induced heart attack’ at Glastonbury festival when she was 13 – when really it was acute food poisoning.
Lily confessed: ‘I got quite a cross text from him this weekend. There was a big piece [in the press] and he texted me, ‘Err cocaine induced heart attack at Glastonbury. Wow.’
Her father is actor Keith Allen, 70, who walked out on her mother Alison Owen, 63, when Lily was four years old, she has been open about their fractious relationship (pictured 2007)
Lily Allen has admitted she ‘had kids for all the wrong reasons’ in a heartbreaking attempt to find ‘unconditional love’
‘And I said, ‘Sorry that’s what I thought… I’m really sorry if I got that wrong but that’s how I remembered it and you never explained it to me in any other way so that’s what I wrote’ and he said, ‘Well that’s not true.’
And I said, ‘I’m really really sorry if I got that wrong, what was it?’ And he said, ‘Acute food poisoning’.
Ahead of her West End debut in 2:22 A Ghost Story in 2021, she said of her father: ‘I haven’t really spoken to him, to be honest, for a while.
‘The last time I texted him was on Father’s Day and he texted back saying ‘Thank you’. We haven’t connected for a while.’
The star added that her mother Alison had been supportive of her role.
As she has candidly discussed her own experience of choosing to have children, Allen reflected on her podcast: ‘My career was at such a high speed, you know high pressure and I’m a people pleaser and I felt like very overwhelmed by what was happening.
‘I just didn’t get much respite and I felt like the one way to stop people hassling me, it’s not about me its about this other person that’s inside me.
‘They did leave me alone, but I don’t think I really understood what I got myself into.’
Back in March, Lily said her two daughters ‘totally ruined’ her pop career because she chose to prioritise them instead of work – insisting, ‘You can’t have it all’.
The singer-turned-actress said she believes women have to decide whether to put their children or their career first, saying she chose the former.
‘My children ruined my career. I love them and they complete me, but in terms of pop-stardom, they totally ruined it,’ she told the Radio Times Podcast.
‘I get really annoyed when people say you can have it all because, quite frankly, you can’t.’
She added: ‘Some people choose their career over their children and that’s their prerogative, but my parents were quite absent when I was a kid. I feel like it left some nasty scars that I’m not willing to repeat on mine.’
