|
RSS:
Beatles.ru в Telegram:
|
|
Ringo, my girlfriend and me
Ringo Starr's stepdaughter Francesca Gregorini talks for the the first time about her relationship with Ally McBeal star, Portia de Rossi. During Francesca Gregorini's childhood, drugs took over the lives of her stepfather Ringo Starr and her mother, Bond film star Barbara Bach. Throughout her twenties, she battled her own drug demons. Now, aged 33, she has fallen in love - with Portia de Rossi, star of the top-rating Channel 4 series Ally McBeal. We meet at The Ivy, a Hollywood landmark, where I spot actor Morgan Freeman, Top Gun producer Jerry Bruckheimer and several studio moguls. Gregorini, unfazed by the wall-to-wall celebrities, is dressed in rock-chick mode - camouflage-print trousers, a yellow T-shirt bearing the logo 'Winona: Don't do Dru drugs wears a platinum band encrusted with diamonds. A few days before our meeting, an American newspaper announced that Gregorini and De Rossi, 29, who plays ice- cool lawyer Nell Porter in the legal drama, have 'married' in a special ceremony. Is this true? She grins. 'I am very honest and I will talk about anything, but not about Portia. I have to respect her privacy. It's not fair on her.' But are they married? 'No, absolutely not. The ring is from Chanel.' Have you met someone you want to spend the rest of your life with? She throws back her mane of pre-Raphaelite curls. 'I am an open person. But out of respect for Portia, I don't want to get into it. I've had boyfriends before, I was a late bloomer sexually. 'I was a tomboy until I was 18. It didn't occur to me to be interested in sex until I went to university - then it was all anyone was interested in. I had boyfriends but I never understood the whole hoopla about sex. I could take it or leave it. Then, when I discovered girls, it was like "Aha, now I get it!" I was 19 years old. I knew I was a lesbian.'I told my mum I thought I might be a lesbian and she talked to Rich [her family's name for Starr] and he said: "She's definitely not a lesbian." Rich had met lesbians when he was touring with The Beatles.'I remember Mum came back to me and said: "Oh, don't worry, Rich says you are not a lesbian. Everything is fine." Finally, when I gave them evidence that I really was a lesbian, they were very supportive and cool. Considering what some lesbians go through, I had it easy.' I ask her about intimate photographs showing her and De Rossi kissing. It was the first public indication that Australian-born De Rossi - who was once romantically linked to Hugh Grant, her costar in Sirens - was gay. 'We didn't know they were being taken. They are what they are. The trouble with newspapers is that they tell the truth, whether you like it or not. I am not going to talk about it.'But she will admit to being 'blissfully' happy. 'I thought being happy would affect my songwriting. I always thought I had to write from a point of angst, but I am truly happy and my writing hasn't been affected.' Gregorini, a singer/songwriter, is preparing to launch her career with a 'showcase' of her songs next month at Johnny Depp's club, The Viper Room, in LA. She has also contributed two songs to the soundtrack of the minor film See Jane Run, in which she also had a small acting role. She was born in Rome. Her mother, who starred in The Spy Who Loved Me, met her father, millionaire Italian industrialist Augusto Gregorini, on a plane.'My mum was living in New York and was going to Italy for a modelling job. He says she paraded back and forth in front of him at the airport and they happened to sit together and that was it. I was born about a year later. I lived in Italy until I was eight. We lived in Rome in this huge four-storey converted church. It was really cool.' Gregorini was soon joined by a brother, Gianni, now 29, who works with their father. When she was eight, her parents divorced and Bach took the children to America. Gregorini says: 'It was awful. I was this all-Italian child and I hardly spoke English. I felt as if I'd landed on another planet. I'd left a gorgeous school and ended up in a public school in Los Angeles.'I was getting into fistfights and being bullied. It was a nightmare. That's when my shyness kicked in. I started to feel isolated and alone.'Mum met Rich on the set of a film called Caveman, which is a cult classic because it's so bad. As a stepdad he was good for my brother and me because he was the exact opposite of our dad. My dad is a real pushover - anything you want goes. Rich is very different. It's the Italian versus the Brit - and a northern Brit at that. Rich is quite staid. He introduced us to a whole other world, both good and bad.' Gregorini is seeringly honest about the first ten years of Starr and Bach's marriage - a decade of drugs and drink - which left the troubled teenager feeling isolated and abandoned. Much of this time was spent in Britain on 80 acres of land near Ascot which, she says, gave her 'a lifelong love of the English countryside'.'When I was living with them, it was their drugs heyday. I had other friends who were rocks stars and their houses were used for parties morning, noon and night. With Rich and Mum it was different. They were very much in love and they wanted nothing to do with anybody else.'When Mum met Rich, I lost her in a way. She was in love but, more than that, they got wrapped up in the whole drugs thing. But their troubles made me a better academic. I studied all the time. I was always hidden away in a room reading because Mum and Dad were out of it. I think Mum and Rich made an effort to be awake when we got home. I'd go off to school in the morning with my brother and they were never around. They were always still sleeping. When we got home at night, Mum and Rich would get out of bed and have dinner or whatever.'They would sit on the couch and watch television and I would say to them: "Why are you doing that now? You can watch television when you're 70." They were so in love that they were happy to stay at home, drink, do drugs and just hide away.' Luckily, her mother and stepfather went into rehab in 1988.'They were very open about it and did it together. I think that's a big reason they are still together - they went through it together and they beat it together. They are amazing people now, so healthy. We have rebuilt a lot of the relationship that was missing when I was a child. 'Seeing the drugs up close had the opposite effect on me: I rebelled against them at first. The house had a recording studio and that was my refuge. That's the first time I got into music; I would write.' Did her stepfather encourage her? 'Please! He gave me one drum lesson. Apart from that, I was on my own. Which was fine. That was just his way. I love Rich because he's a good bloke. He's good to Mum and they are a good team. Rich loves TV - EastEnders, Coronation Street, everything.' I tell her that the idea of Ringo Starr sitting watching Coronation Street is funny. 'He loves it. My whole childhood was spent watching that show and EastEnders.' But he's a Beatle... 'Yeah, but this Beatle loves EastEnders.' The recent death of George Harrison hit the family hard. 'Rich was so sad when George died. They had a deep connection, a soul connection,' she says. 'People think The Beatles were chummy all the time but that's not entirely the case. I knew George as "the gardener". He loved his garden and when we'd visit his house, that was what he showed us. He was so proud of it.' She asks me not to reveal where Starr and Bach now live 'because of what happened with George when he was attacked'. She is protective of her stepfather and he, in return, is supportive of her and her relationship, and was a guest at De Rossi's recent birthday party.Gregorini laughs. 'I wish Mum and Rich had been more shocked when I told them about my sexuality. I was like "This is who I am" and they were totally relaxed and said "Yeah, whatever", and then life went on exactly as it had before.' Gregorini finally conquered her loneliness after going to America to attend Brown University, a prestigious college on Rhode Island, to study film: 'It was so strange leaving England and going to America. Again, it was music which held me together. I played in various bands, and I enjoyed it. I had a release for my frustrations.'At Brown, I had my fair share of drugs and alcohol. I experimented. But there was always something in my brain which containedit. When I came to LA, I carried on doing drugs. I lost a lot of my twenties to drugs in the same way Rich and Mum lost years. I had my share of fun, but I am glad I did it in my twenties. 'I haven't led the most conventional of lives. For a long time I was your typical messed-up child of a celebrity, two celebrities, actually. But I've made it through and this is the happiest and most stable I have been in my life. Making music has really helped me get to this place. I just want to make the most of it and enjoy it.' For the aspiring singer her first 'proper' interview turns out to be less of an ordeal than she feared: 'I guess I am used to being in the spotlight.' This is her first interview, says Gregorini, 'because before I really had nothing much to talk about except what the famous people around me were doing. I never felt I wanted to speak publicly about my life. I always did a good job of ducking out of the spotlight.'Now I have something to say and I believe the best way of doing things is to be totally honest about my sexuality and the problems I've had in my past. I believe people accept things as long as you are honest.' Isn't it ironic that she has high-profile parents and now a high-profile lesbian lover? 'I have never known life without one of my parents, or both, being in the public eye. That is just who I am.' While Gregorini protests that she is not into celebrity, she admits that her best friends are the children of stars - Ione Skye and Donovan Leitch, the children of Sixties singer Donovan, and Amy Fleetwood, daughter of Mick. 'I am not trying to pass the buck, but when you have famous parents you are up against a lot. It makes you stand out at school, people treat you differently. As much success as I have, I will never be a Beatle. That is something I just deal with.'I've dabbled in therapy but in the end, music works for me. I can't say that I've managed to come out of my childhood damage-free and I think that's why it's taken me until now to work through things.' Gregorini - who has an apartment in New York and a home in the Hollywood Hills - is house-hunting with De Rossi. She says: 'I'm ready to be a homebody. For years I didn't know what I wanted. It's taken me until now to work that out. Now I am ready for a career but also to be a parent. I feel confident in my own skin and I'm ready to be me.' Комментариев еще нет
|
|
|
