Kelly MacDonald never read any of English author A.A. Milne’s Winnie-The-Pooh books as a child.
The Scottish actress, and star of Simon Curtis movie Goodbye Christopher Robin, admitted she missed out on Milne’s tales of the honey-loving bear and his group of pals, as her mother preferred her to learn poems at bedtimes.
In an interview with British newspaper The Metro, the Trainspotting actress who has two sons, Freddie, nine, and Theodore, four, added that she tried to catch up by reading the stories to her kids, but the strategy didn’t quite go to plan.
“Nobody read it it to me. My mum was great, she read other things. She used to get me to learn poetry before bed, which was quite taxing!” she smiled. “I didn’t come across the writing until I was preparing to film and so I wanted to introduce my children to these stories but Freddie was on to me because I did the same thing when I was filming Swallows and Amazons – and he knew it was work for me and was very unhelpful! He was having none of it.”
The 40-year-old plays Christopher Robin’s nanny Olive in the movie, which tells the story of the sometimes difficult relationship between Pooh author A.A. Milne and his son, who provided the inspiration for the books which were inspired by his childhood. As a parent, Kelly sympathised with Milne’s failure to strike the right balance as a father and a writer and revealed it’s something she also fears.
“It’s ironic that these stories have given so much joy to so many people over so many generations, and will continue to do so, but it was at the cost of one boy’s childhood. And that is unfortunate,” she sighed. “I was happy when I read that he made his peace with it in the end and forgave his parents.
Nobody gets parenting exactly right. I worry about it all the time, what damage I’m doing and what’s going to be the thing that’s remembered.”
