Holliday Grainger is having a moment! Amidst the ongoing success of Strike, the actress has marked the release of Mickey 17 – her second collaboration with Robert Pattinson – and will next appear in The Stolen Girl, which is slated to premiere in May.
There's no doubt about it, Holliday is currently navigating one of the busiest periods in her ever-expanding career, but the TV star has actually been on the scene for 30 years, after making her debut as a child actor in the British comedy-drama, All Quiet on the Preston Front.
According to the Strike favourite, it was her mother – graphic designer Jan – who introduced her to the world of acting, and in the years since she's served as one of Holliday's biggest cheerleaders and closest confidantes. Here, we explore their heartwarming bond…
© GettyBack in 2017, Holliday opened up about her childhood in the suburb of Didsbury. Speaking with The Telegraph, the actress said: "I'm an only child of a single mum and she was always working. She was amazing when I was little.
"If I wanted to go to ballet lessons or horse riding, it was always, 'Yep, fine.' And it's only now that I realise how little money we had."
© GettyDuring this period of her life, Holliday was introduced to the entertainment industry, when one of her mother's friends who worked for the BBC, thought of her for a role.
"I just sort of fell into it and did it as a hobby, it was always just something I did rather than something I wanted to do professionally," she revealed to Great British Life.
"My mum had a friend who worked in the casting department at the BBC and they were looking for a child and she thought of me. I'd been off school with chicken pox and to keep me occupied my mum had given me the script and I'd been doing paintings of the scenes I would be in.
"I took them along to the audition and I think they were impressed by how keen I was," Holliday continued. "I didn't say it was my mum's way of stopping me getting bored."
© Getty ImagesAfter establishing that she wanted to act, Holliday's mum was more than happy to support her, with Jan accompanying her daughter to set. "I didn't like being chaperoned by anyone that wasn't my mum. I liked my own independence and my mum could gauge that at a good level," Holliday told The Independent.
© ShutterstockIt was only when Holliday was in her teen years, that Jan gave her the green light to make professional decisions. "After that, she said, 'That's it, you can do it by yourself now. Bye.' So then I was getting myself up and down to London for auditions and back and forth to school," Holliday reflected to The Telegraph.
"I didn't need to rebel that much because I already had my own life in a way."
