Lily Allen: I’m done being at the forefront
The singer and actress said she struggled to put herself back together after a string of traumatic incidents.
Lily Allen has said she is “done being at the forefront” as she revealed she never “managed to reconnect” after the stillbirth of her son, her stalking ordeal and an alleged sexual assault.
The singer and actress, 38, said she has not ruled out returning to music but is currently embracing the “truthful” aspect of acting.
She told Hunger magazine: “People may think I’m retreating, but I’m done being at the forefront.”
She added: “There was the stillbirth of my son, the stalking incident, the sexual assault — I felt myself leave my body when they happened, and I don’t think I’ve ever managed to reconnect.”
Allen was six months pregnant when she suffered a stillbirth in 2010. She suffered a further ordeal when, after years of obsessively following her, Alex Gray broke into Allen’s home in 2015 while she and her children were inside sleeping, leading to his conviction and detention under the Mental Health Act.
In addition, she alleged in her memoir that a record industry figure assaulted her when she fell asleep in his hotel room while abroad after she got “smashed” at a party.
Allen, who is married to Stranger Things actor David Harbour and mother to two daughters with former partner Sam Cooper, has also been open about her substance abuse issues.
She said: “Ethel was seven, Marnie was six when I got clean, and there’s a lot of shit that happened before that they’ll be really cross about.”
Discussing her decision to move into acting, which has included a stint on the West End stage and a turn in Sky series Dreamland, she said: “Theatre and playing to big crowds gets the adrenaline going … I’m like ‘oh I’m f****** alive again’ — it’s addictive.”
She added: “I feel like I have done everything I wanted to do in terms of my career, and I do feel like I won at being a musician, but that being said, I can’t just be making packed lunches and ferrying kids to activities forever.
“I’ll do it for a few months and then I’ll have to stick my teeth into something — plus I think it’s healthy for them to see me doing something else.”
She continued: “I’m not saying I’m never gonna make music again. But with acting, especially theatre, something truthful happens in the moment, and when I write music, I’m thinking about how people are going to receive it.”
For the full interview with Lily Allen and shoot by Rankin see Hunger magazine’s Timeslice issue, on newsstands from May 24.
