ELAINE C Smith says she will never put her comedian daughter Hannah Morton on stage with her at The Kings Theatre unless someone else has auditioned her for the part.
The Two Doors Down actress and much loved Scots comedian will this year play the Kings Theatre as part of the Glasgow International festival which celebrates its 21st birthday with over 500 acts this March while her daughter Hannah,30, also performs her self penned Sad Girls Club appearing at Strathclyde Union.
And Elaine, now 65, has always tried to ensure that Hannah is not a nepo baby.
She said: “I've said to her, there will never be a time that I will put you on the stage of the Kings with me unless someone else has auditioned you and thinks you're right for the part.
“I can't do that to her. I remember it happened to Sophia Coppola in The Godfather Three and Francis Ford Coppola put her in and apparently Al Pacino who had known her since she was a baby always said ‘Don't do this. She's not ready’. It exposed her to the worst criticism and it was awful.
She added: “Not that she wasn’t talented, but she had to plough her own furrow and I think that's really important. I'll always encourage Hannah and always say ‘Yeah, I think that you should do that, but there's no ‘Oh, here's my daughter. She should be in this.’
Elaine said she made sure Hannah experienced the unglamorous side of the business before embarking her her comedy career.
She said: “She didn't have rose tinted specs, thinking ‘I'm going to be an overnight success like you’. She saw the graft and it was really important to me.
“The first job she took was a schools tour of Highland and Island schools where you built the set, travelled in a bus and stayed in rotten digs and all of that. I thought ‘If she survives this, then she does want to do it. She realises it's not glamorous. I started out doing that. I also did say to her ‘Write what you want to do’. Don't sit around waiting for a guy to come along going ‘Yes, you are brilliant’.”
Elaine herself says it has been a hard journey to become the well kent face she is today.
She said: “It's been a hard climb, a hard journey and I took lots of risks, setting up my own company and everything like that. So it has not been easy as a woman in this city in the over the last 40 years of doing this. As soon as you get to a part in the climb up the mountain and sit there and just survey the view, you think, wow, I've come a long way.”
Talents at this years fest which runs from March 13-34 include viral sensation Zara Gladman (west end mum), Mark Nelson Susie McCabe, Frankie Boyle, Some Laugh Live and Old Firm Facts Live, alongside Frank Skinner, Reginald D Hunter and Caroline Rhea.
More at www.glasgowcomedyfestival.com
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