Dawn talks about her rows with her child and mum

SHE has made no bones about the fractious relationship she has with her adopted daughter, admitting they cannot live together because of the ‘frequent wars’ they have. But Dawn French revealed she too suffered a strained relationship with her own mother, Felicity Roma, growing up, recalling how she felt she was ‘allergic’ to her.

The Vicar Of Dibley actress, who recently turned 60, opened up about her struggles to keep the peace with her own daughter Billie Henry, pictured below with parents Dawn and Lenny Henry in 2005, in a candid interview about motherhood.

‘I remember my own relationship with my own mother and the warring that we had,’ the comedienne said. ‘And I firmly believe that it is kind of part of human nature to fight with your mother, because otherwise how do you separate?

‘When you have to tear apart, and that must happen, it would kill you. The grief would kill you.

‘So you start the warring early on and I remember being utterly allergic to my mum for a long time, and then realising that she was my dearest… and that she was going to always have my back. I kind of had to travel through that to the other side of it.’

Dawn put her career on hold in 2012 to care for her mother and was left heartbroken when the charity boss died aged 77.

The actress said she hoped that one day she and 26-year-old Billie, who she adopted with her ex-husband Lenny Henry, would ‘get to the other side’ of their relationship after years of being at war, adding: ‘Time will tell.’

Dawn, who split from Henry after 25 years of marriage, went on to marry Mark Bignell in April 2013. She now lives near her daughter in Cornwall.

She said in 2015 of Billie: ‘Our relationship exists in a bizarre kind of process of peacetime, small battles, war. The peacetime is much more than the other two but we have our wars.’