Los Angeles: Singer Lily Allen, who is now settled with her ‘Stranger Things’ actor David Harbour, went through a tough time when she achieved fame as a singer.
Her mother Alison Owen said she saw her daughter and Amy Winhouse go through similar struggles when they first got into the public eye.
Owen, who is a producer on the upcoming Amy Winehouse biopic ‘Back to Black’, told The Times that she thought being in the spotlight “would destroy my daughter” and lead her down the same grim path Winehouse ended up on.
Winehouse died of alcohol poisoning on July 23, 2011, at the age of 27. Her brother believed that bulimia was also to blame.
Referring to Allen’s former-actor father Keith Allen, she added: “Lily fitted the bill because, early in her success, her role model was her dad.
“She’d seen him idolised for swearing, taking drugs and being drunk in the Groucho Club (in London), so in her young brain she thought that’s what you did when you became famous.
“She didn’t realise it’s only OK for men. Women get punished for it.”
Owen said photographers would wait for her daughter in the early days of her fame and “say things like, ‘I see your single’s going down the charts,’ or, ‘You’ve put on weight, Lily’ ” in the hope of making her “angry or cry”.
She also spoke about feeling disturbed after seeing Winehouse being on drugs and shockingly thin while out with her former partner Blake Fielder-Civil, 41, at a music industry party.
Owen said: “Amy was as thin as a pencil. And she and Blake were in the middle of this room dancing in a full-on sexual way. Both were clearly ‘using’ and I remember thinking, ‘This is an accident waiting to happen. This is going to be a disaster’.”
Allen has now been sober for four years and is focusing on her acting career from her home in the US.
–IANS