Dawn French has credited her late father with helping her grow up free from insecurities.
Dawn French has opened up about her late father's influence on her
The 'French and Saunders' star's dad Denys took his own life in the late 1970s when Dawn was just 19 years old, but the 65-year-old comedian/actress says he prepared her well for life because he made sure she knew her worth.
She told Yours magazine: "Now that I look back on it as an adult, I think he needed to give me some armour, he told me I should value myself and that I deserved the very best.
"As a little chubby girl I could have grown up with all kinds of insecurities, but because of him I have nerv doubted that I'm not worth something."
Dawn's father spent years struggling with depression, and the TV star says she's feared falling victim to mental health problems herself but she's managed to keep a positive outlook and find joy in little things.
She added: "I've had sadness, but I haven't sunk to depths like that. I've got too much to live for I think. I find joy in lots of tiny things."
It comes after Dawn revealed she has spent years in agony after seriously injuring herself when recreating her famous 'Vicar of Dibley' puddle jump scene on a chat show.
The actress agreed to act out the famous skit - in which her character disappeared into a deep puddle up to her neck - during an appearance on Paul O'Grady's chat show in 2009 in which she would fall through specially-built set but she landed badly and was left with lasting injuries. During her one-woman stage show in Exeter last month - as reported by the Daily Mail newspaper - Dawn explained: "[It was] catastrophically misguided ... They constructed a 10ft-high hill out of scaffolding covered in AstroTurf. The idea was that there was a long enough drop for me to disappear into. Then some bright spark had the idea of having a shallow silicon membrane containing two inches of water on top so that, as I jumped through, the water would splash up and look like a deep puddle. But what was I falling onto? The answer is absolutely nothing. Except for 10ft below there were two very thin crash mats in a film studio with a flat concrete floor. Any fool would know this was a disaster in the making. Any fool but me."
Dawn landed badly and heard a "twanging noise" and spent a long time in pain before consulting a surgeon who warned her she would need a knee-replacement operation in the future.
She has since been keeping her pain at bay with steroid injections.
Tagged in Dawn French Paul O' Grady