Miriam Margolyes 'ashamed' as she admits hitting paralysed mum

Miriam Margolyes has admitted hitting her paralysed mum. The Harry Potter actress spoke out in a new episode of BBC Imagine.

The esteemed actress addressed the incident in an interview, as she reflected on her memoir. Miriam has admitted feeling “deeply ashamed”.

She said: “I didn’t mention something that I should have mentioned. And that was that I hit my mother when she was paralysed. Anybody who’s been a carer will know how frustrating and difficult it is and I let that happen, I’m deeply ashamed of it.” Miriam added: “The thing that really gets to me is that my mother forgave me.

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“I hit her when she was paralysed and she forgave me.” Margolyes said: “My mother was the centre of my life as I was of hers. Mummy’s girl.

“I’d been berated, actually, for calling my parents ‘mummy’ and ‘daddy’ – well bollocks to that.” She said: “Without a doubt, the most important person in my life was my mother.

“She bound me to her quite deliberately with emotional hoops of steel.” Margolyes had said her mum described their family-of-three as a ‘Fortress'. She added: “I think that’s how she saw her place in the world – besieged.”

The star stole the show as Nursie in Blackadder, dazzled as a grande dame in Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence, was a colourful counterpoint to the doomed romance in Baz Luhrman's Romeo Juliet, and became an international star after playing Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter franchise.

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