Emotional ties with Arabella Weir
The actress and writer on rebellious reading, sentimental scents and what she has in common with Obama
Arabella Weir
Archie, my 19-year-old son, is a very exuberant person. When he was one and a half and throwing a tantrum, someone said, ‘I think you’ve got an Italian footballer here.’ He painted this picture when he was five – it’s so evocative of who he is.
We were living in Cairo where my father [the late Sir Michael Weir] was posted in the British Embassy. My mother Alison was very bohemian, so was the last person to set up a shot like this. It’s poignant for me as it shows what she was trying to, but couldn’t, be.
![This Mother’s Day box was made for me by my daughter Isabella [21] when she was seven – it sits in my office in pride of place. She is contemplative and hard-working. I’m delighted to say that she has not the smallest interest in becoming a performer like me.](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/04/18/11/12427962-0-image-m-28_1555582849370.jpg)
This Mother’s Day box was made for me by my daughter Isabella [21] when she was seven – it sits in my office in pride of place. She is contemplative and hard-working. I’m delighted to say that she has not the smallest interest in becoming a performer like me.
My best friend Helen [Scott Lidgett] died in 2012 before her grandson, Arthur, was born, so I said I’d be grandmother for him. His parents got this Le Labo Vetiver 46 to thank me for looking after him. I’m called ‘SG’ – ‘Surrogate Granny’.
I bought this portrait of Obama from my friend Nicola Green [married to MP David Lammy]. In this shot, he’s just walking but his pose looks the same as John Wayne’s in the True Grit poster. Obama has a copy too, so he and I have the same picture.
The first time I got properly drunk I was staying with a friend at her elder sister’s house in Provence. I was 15 and lay about all day thinking I was dying as her sister’s husband brought me water in this duck jug. I kept it as a memento of my first hangover.
My granny was the most wonderful, unconditionally loving Christian. She used to say, ‘When I go, you’ll have this.’ It was a huge ruby surrounded by diamonds. I couldn’t carry it off so I had it reset by the jeweller Daphne Krinos – now I wear it every day.
My mother was an English teacher. One of her sweeping statements was that I was a moron because I never read. I rebelled by reading in secret, but I was so blown away by George Eliot’s Middlemarch that I couldn’t pretend I didn’t like reading any more.
- Arabella is starring in The Last Temptation of Boris Johnson, premiering at London’s Park Theatre on 9 May. Visit parktheatre.co.uk for tickets