Fair City's Sorcha Furlong revealed her daughter was shocked when kids at school broke the news to her that her mother was famous.
The Dubliner is a well known face in Irish households, having played Carrigstown’s Orla Molloy for over two decades.
But the actress revealed one house that doesn’t recognise her ‘famous’ status is her own - and told that her own daughter, Stella, 11, didn’t even know what she did for a living until she found out at school.
Sorcha told Irish Daily Mirror: “You know the way they go, I’m embarrassing just because I breathe,” she laughed, before adding: “And then I am obviously more embarrassing because I am on the telly.”
“God bless her, people say to her ‘is your mam on Fair City’ but i am just mammy, that’s it. We don’t do airs and graces. I never have.
"She didn’t even know what I did for a living until she started school and people were asking her. And she was like ‘mam, are you famous?’
“Yeah, she was like ‘are you famous’ and I was like ‘no, why?’
“And she says ‘because you are on the telly mam, they told me’.
“But I just said I am on the telly and that’s why people recognise me but I'm not famous.
“And she actually couldn’t [believe it]… It was so weird.”
Sorcha said she had brought her daughter to visit the RTE set over the years, but Stella didn’t realise what it was because she was so young.
She explained: “Even though she’d met everyone on Fair City and been on set and I remember one day I’d say she was four or five and I had to go up to the office to get something in Fair City and she was like ‘ok is this where you work then?’ and I had shown her the set and McCoys, but she couldn’t piece it together.”
And now that she is aware, Sorcha joked that her daughter still has no interest in her high profile gig.
“She had seen it, but she’s at that age now, she’ll be 12 on Paddy's Day, and I’m just embarrassing, anyway. That’s what I've found.
“And it's so funny, I've talked to all of my friends who have daughters the same age, and they think we just came out of the womb at 44-years of age do you know what I am. And never had a life,” she laughed.
The seasoned soap star was speaking as she had wrapped up some intense scenes for Fair City, which left her feeling ‘exhausted’.
“It is like anything, even when you are doing theatre, it is the adrenaline. Your body reacts, like if you are doing loads of crying scenes, your body is exhausted because your body doesn't know that you are only pretending even though you are really crying, but crying because you are acting not because you are sad in real life.
“So your body gets really tired.
“It is the same with theatre, your body doesn’t know what is going on.”
Caught up in her emotions Orla made the ultimate mistake in the show last week, by slapping her boyfriend Paul’s daughter Ruth across the face and hiding it.
But Sorcha said this is only the beginning of a much more complicated family drama.
Fair City airs on RTÉ One on Sunday 8:30PM, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 8PM, or catch up on RTÉ Player.
