The Daily Telegraph - Features
Like Sarah Snook, I found that having children can actually benefit your career
Hurrah for Sarah Snook, who has given motherhood some muchneeded positive PR.
After collecting her Olivier Award at the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday night, the 36-year-old Succession actress said she was only able to learn her 60,000word Oscar Wilde monologue thanks to the window of time breastfeeding her baby daughter afforded her.
“I was doing a lot of night breastfeeding,” explained the star of The Picture of Dorian Gray. “And in the evening when I would wake up, rather than being on my phone and feeding her I would run over the lines. I find that if you learn your lines at night and then sleep on them they do go in more effectively.”
All too often motherhood is described by famous women as a terrible penalty, especially in the world of show business. Model Emily Ratajkowski said those early months made her feel “totally insane”. Actress Megan Fox claimed the pressure to return to work and look perfect made it hard to enjoy that time: “The problem is in your brain [while] you’re delivering [your baby] and it’s like ‘OK, well I have to lose 30 pounds in eight weeks.’” And singer Lily Allen most recently declared that while she loves her kids and “they complete me… in terms of pop stardom, they totally ruined it”.
The challenges undoubtedly vary depending on your circumstances, but Snook is right to point out that early motherhood provides golden moments. I got a lot of writing done while I was breastfeeding; I conducted phone interviews while I was breastfeeding. And if, as a writer, you’re stuck on a sentence or plot point, it’s always as you read to your child at night that it miraculously resolves itself. So Cyril Connolly – and his “pram in the hallway” – can stick that in his pipe and smoke it.
If you’re stuck on a plot point, it’s always as you read to your child that it miraculously resolves