Lily Allen Just Got Seriously Real About The Way Her “Daddy Issues” Have Impacted Romantic Relationships
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Lily Allen has always been incredibly open about her strained relationship with her father, Keith Allen, who is a British actor.
Just three years into her career, in 2009, Lily opened up about the day that Keith walked out on her family in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph.
She said that she remembered “the day that Dad left, and us all saying goodbye to him in the hall of our flat in Bloomsbury. I just remember there being a thing of 'does that mean Dad's never going to be around?’”
Despite being reassured otherwise, Lily poignantly added: “Then, of course, Dad did go, and didn't come back for a while."
Lily doubled down on how little she sees her father in 2015, when she reportedly tweeted: “My dad walked out on me when I was 4, I’m sick of this. My dad was at Latitude when I headlined and didn’t even come to see me. I’ve probably spent more time walking my dogs than I have with my dad my entire life.”
And she was even more candid in her 2018 memoir My Thoughts Exactly, where she called her dad a “self-saboteur” and a "narcissist." She also claimed that he’d had a cocaine-related heart attack at Glastonbury Festival in 1998 when she was 14 years old.
Lily later revealed that her dad was left "quite cross" about what she'd written, and messaged her after the book's release to say that the heart attack had actually been brought on by "acute food poisoning."
After that, Lily revealed that she and her dad “haven’t connected for a while” in a 2021 interview with the Telegraph. During an appearance on The Recovery podcast that same year, Lily got seriously candid about her relationship with both of her parents.
Lily’s mom, Alison Owen, is a film producer, and looking back on her childhood, Lily shared: "I needed to be seen. I had spent my whole life being part of this scene of really impressive people and everyone else being prioritized over me."
She went on to theorize that Keith and Alison resented her success, explaining: “I think that also my parents… Not my mom, but maybe my dad was, like, pissed off that they kind of gave me the short straw as a kid and then, against all odds, I had kind of gone 'fuck off' and done even better than them."
Analyzing how her parents might have felt, she added: “This isn’t fair. We didn’t give you the childhood you deserve, and we expected you to fail as a result, yet here you are, having exceeded all our expectations.”
Thinking back to the start of her singing career, Lily also recalled: “All I wanted was affirmation and praise, and I didn’t even get it then. I got it from strangers but not the people I wanted it from. In fact I was met by a bit of resentment from those people."
As a result, Lily admitted to turning to “drugs and alcohol” because she “was just really sad.”
The following year, Lily responded to New York magazine’s viral cover story about nepo babies by acknowledging her own nepotism while also reiterating the downside of having famous parents.
“In childhood we crave stability and love, nurturing, we don’t care about money or proximity to power yet. Many of the nepo babies are starved of these basic things in childhood as their parents are probably narcissistic,” she tweeted at the time.
“It can be hard to see one’s own privilege when you’re still processing childhood trauma,” she added. “And a lot of these kids haven’t figured that out yet.”
And in the latest episode of Lily’s podcast with her best friend Miquita Oliver, Miss Me?, Lily candidly looked back at how her relationship with her father influenced her romantic relationships as an adult as she laughed about having “daddy issues.”
As she and Miquita discussed their type in men, Miquita acknowledged: “You quite like fatherly figures,” before referencing a “baby-faced” boybander that Lily had a crush on in the ‘90s.
“He was sort of an anomaly,” Lily admitted. “Because I will always just, you know, I’m daddy issues, aren’t I? I just want a big, old, hairy daddy forever. That’s all I want.”
“Right,” Miquita replied. “Because you’re looking for your father? Because my dad also left…”
“But you didn’t know your dad,” Lily interjected. “So you were, sort of like, filling in the gaps. I know who my dad was, and my dad was sort of there but not there.”
“Inconsistent,” her cohost agreed, to which Lily replied: “Yes. So, I think that you, yours, was slightly like a fantasy whereas mine was, like, trying to recreate something that existed.”
“Oh my god, you’re so right!” Miquita exclaimed, before adding: “Hence the obsessions,” which Lily corrected to “crushes.”
Lily married builder and decorator Sam Cooper in 2011, and they welcomed two daughters, 13-year-old Ethel and 11-year-old Marnie, before splitting in 2016.
Lily’s divorce was finalized in 2019, and that same year, she started dating Stranger Things star David Harbour after they met on celebrity dating app Raya.
They married in Las Vegas in 2020 and now live together in Brooklyn, New York.
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