'I don't take any of it for granted'

Superstar Hannah Waddingham on her rise to fame and how her talent for singing runs in the family

- LISA JARVIS AND JENNY DAVIS

She's an award-winning actress of both stage and screen, so it's little wonder Hannah Waddingham's 10-year-old daughter has inherited the performing gene.

The Ted Lasso star says her daughter Kitty - from her eight-year relationship with Italian businessman Gianluca Cugnetto - already has an impressive singing range for her age.

Hannah herself, though not formally trained, has a rare four-octave vocal range, while her own mother, Melodie Kelly, was the principal at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden before Hannah was born.

"She then took 11 years off to bring up myself and my brother," Hannah, who is one of the voice artists in the children's BBC Christmas animation Tiddler, explained. "And then she went back in supposedly low-key, so that she could be mama and on stage - to the chorus of the English National Opera at the London Coliseum. Both her parents were also opera singers, so it's in the bloodstream.

"And now my little girl, I hear up in the house, and she's [sings in an opera style] and I just think, 'That's not normal!' So it's in the blood, for sure."

Hannah has never publicly spoken about her split from Gianluca, but their last red-carpet appearance together was at the Olivier Awards in April 2022.

The following year, Hannah, 50, referred to herself as "a single mother" in an interview and has been successfully juggling her role of mum with work ever since.

But motherhood hasn't always been plain sailing for the star, who was born in south London - in fact, she was once told she couldn't have children.

"I was naturally in shock, it's not something you ever expect to hear," she said. "I went down the kind of Eastern medicine route and for me, thankfully, it worked. On my 40th birthday, I came out of hospital with her after a few days of complications.