Victoria Sellers: How a psychic convinced me to forgive Dad
PETER SELLERS’S daughter has revealed how a visit to a psychic persuaded her to forgive the comedian after he apologised for excluding her from his will.
When the Pink Panther and Goons star died of a heart attack in 1980, aged 54, he left the bulk of his £5.5 million fortune to his fourth wife, Lynne Frederick, whom Victoria ‘loathed’ and Sellers was divorcing.
Victoria, his only child with his second wife Britt Ekland, was left just £800 – with a further £10,000 for her education.
The actor’s estate, valued at £20million today, ended up going to Frederick’s young daughter, Cassie Unger, the product of a later marriage to Californian heart doctor Barry Unger, after her mother drank herself to death in 1994. It was only after Victoria, 49, visited a psychic last November that she came to terms with her father’s decision. ‘What happened was so profound I couldn’t ignore it,’ she said. ‘The guy didn’t know who I was. I went there with a folder, which I kept closed, which had a picture of me, Dad, my Swedish grandma and a couple of letters from my father written on his favourite Gucci notepaper. ‘The medium said my father wanted to apologise. He said Dad was proud of me for surviv- ing what I’d been through and that none of it had been meant to happen, that he was sorry.
‘People might think I’m nuts but it was what I needed to hear. After all these years it was time to let go of the anger. I sobbed my heart out.
‘I went home and took out photographs of him that I’d kept hidden away for years. I looked up and said, “It’s OK Dad, we’re good.”’
Victoria rents a room in West Hollywood and works at a restaurant. After a lifelong battle with alcohol and drug addiction, she has been clean for three years.
She has two half-siblings, Sarah and Michael, from her father’s first marriage to actress Anne Howe.
Sarah shuns the limelight, running a teddy bear shop in London, while Michael died in 2006, aged 52.
Victoria said: ‘They missed out on the legacy, too. Dad’s will didn’t just hurt me, it hurt the whole family. We never contested it because under British law you can only contest a will if you are left nothing. We were left a paltry amount.’
Victoria would like to come to an agreement with Ms Unger, who controls the Sellers fortune, including the rights to his name. She said: ‘Cassie can keep all Dad’s millions. All I want is the right to use my father’s name. It belongs to us, his family. And there are home movies of me and Dad I’ve never seen. I’ve given up on wanting any money. But I’d love to see those movies.’