As I come to the end of my life, I've finally faced up to the painful secret of my past: Terminally ill LYNDA BELLINGHAM on one last quest... to find her biological father

  • Actress Lynda Bellingham has been told she only has weeks left to live
  • The 66-year-old has chosen to end her treatment for colon cancer 
  • Bellingham was born in Canada, but was adopted by a British couple 
  • She tracked down her biological mother, but had never met her father 

By Lynda Bellingham For The Mail On Sunday

Published: 15:56 EST, 4 October 2014 | Updated: 06:27 EST, 5 October 2014

In her own uplifting words, actress Lynda Bellingham last week revealed how the chemotherapy tackling her colon cancer has ravaged her body, and how she made the emotive decision to end the treatment, effectively choosing the date of her own death.

Today, in the second extract from her powerful memoirs, the star – who was born in Canada but adopted by a British couple who brought her to England as a baby – tells of her poignant bid to ‘tie up loose ends’ of her life by tracking down her natural father... and her joy in seeing his spirit live on in her grandchildren.

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Colourful start: Lynda Bellingham was born in Canada but adopted by a British couple at four months,  who brought her to England as a baby 

Colourful start: Lynda Bellingham was born in Canada but adopted by a British couple who brought her to England as a baby 

It is almost impossible to understand why bad things happen to us, but I refuse to linger on the awful reminders of my impending doom. My faith has struggled considerably, and many times I have tried to pray and have given up in despair. But at this point in my life I am prepared to accept my lot, as long as He looks after my husband and my boys.

One ambition still important to me is this: as I am having to face up to the fact that I am coming to the end of my life, I am drawn once again to how my life began and where I came from, and in particular who my birth father really was. I am, of course, adopted.

Strangely, I had felt some reluctance to pick up the research on him. I don’t know why, though I think I was quite badly hurt by the way things ended up when I had found – and then lost – my birth mother.

It seemed the right thing to do when, 25 years ago, I went in search of Marjorie Hughes. I suppose instinct tells you that the mother is the one to find, but looking back I now realise for me it was absolutely wrong. My mother, a devout Baptist, had me out of wedlock and she kept my existence a secret throughout her life. I was a guilty secret and I hated that.

'The man I never knew': Lynda's father Carl Seymour Hutton displaying his National Guard uniform in the First World War

'The man I never knew': Lynda's father Carl Seymour Hutton displaying his National Guard uniform in the First World War

After Marjorie died in February 2012, I was very upset that nobody in her family wanted me to attend the funeral – outside the immediate family I wasn’t talked about and they did not tell me she had died until it was too late for me to get there. I remained a shameful secret forever, even beyond her lifetime.

So I suppose for a long time I felt that I didn’t want to set myself up for another fall. Then my sister Jean and her daughter Martha started to do some more research into my family and my genetic father, Carl Seymour Hutton.

This much I do know: he was American and he played his part in the First World War, serving overseas with the National Guard from June 21, 1916 until May 19, 1918. (My wonderful adoptive father, Captain D. J. Bellingham DFC AFC Bar, played his part in the Second World War, too.)

There was very little to go on with Carl except a ship’s log of passengers going to New Zealand in August 1947. The ship was called the Rangitiki and was used to carry American women to New Zealand to meet the families of the servicemen they married or were engaged to during the war.

My mother’s name is there and so is my father’s – she as a passenger and he as a crew member. She had been married to Bruce Bond, a New Zealander serving in the air force, who was shot down and died shortly after their wedding, and she was travelling to meet his parents. My mother and Carl met on board and, once back in New York, where she was then living, they had an affair.

She then returned home to Canada to tell her parents she was going to get married. When she discovered she was pregnant, she rang Carl and broke the news, only to be told there were plenty of other men on that boat and questioned on how she could be sure the baby was his.

When I heard this sorry tale, I was full of righteous indignation and pronounced my father a rotter, but now I admit I have mixed feelings. I have discovered a thread in my heart that had nowhere to go and finally, after 66 years, I think I know where it ties up!

I am, though, getting ahead of myself. I didn’t know what to expect when Martha started to look online, but after some digging, she found me a second cousin, a girl called Niki Pittman. We have since done a DNA test and are indeed related – Niki’s great-grandmother was my father’s older sister Berthe.

Niki began to research her family history in some great detail. Her great-grandmother’s family members were homesteaders. They travelled more than 1,000 miles from the only home they had known, to move to the American state of Idaho and set about establishing a home and farm. Government made land available and a family would have to file a claim and then work the land for three years. There was little irrigation to deliver water to the land and many mistakes were made not only by the new settlers but by the engineers in charge. It was a hard life.

Meanwhile, Niki discovered the artistic side to the family too. Another of Carl’s sisters, Leona Hutton, was a silent film star. Between 1913 and 1916 she made more than 50 films – lucky cow!

My father also had a niece called June Clyde who was a fairly successful actress, and came over to Britain for a period and made several Sherlock Holmes films. My sister has managed to get me videos of these films. It is also bizarre that I have a framed set of cigarette cards in my study of film stars of the day, with June Clyde among them.

A sad secret to the end: 'This is me and my birth mother Marjorie, who gave me up for adoption when I was four months. I saw her a number of times over the years. The thing that broke my heart was that in 2012 no one in her family told me she had died until it was too late to get to her funeral. I’d always been a secret, so it was a bit like being rejected twice'

A sad secret to the end: 'This is me and my birth mother Marjorie, who gave me up for adoption when I was four months. I saw her a number of times over the years. The thing that broke my heart was that in 2012 no one in her family told me she had died until it was too late to get to her funeral. I’d always been a secret, so it was a bit like being rejected twice'

I’d always thought it funny that no one else in my family had shared my theatrical side, but suddenly I had a theatrical pedigree after all.

As the years went on it seems that Carl had less and less to do with his family, and they really knew very little about what he got up to in his life. According to a family bible, he married a lady called Helen Kasper on April 19, 1924 in Chicago, Illinois. Niki thinks they had a son called Jackie, who moved to California but has since died. My genetic father passed away in 1959.

As Niki has said in one of her emails: ‘Carl led an unusual life and I believe he kept almost all of it a secret from his family. I think there is so much left to uncover!’

Perhaps it is only natural to tie up loose ends. I am always having clearouts now – it is a great way of assuaging any guilt one might have about buying something new if you can give away something else to a friend in the meantime. I also think it is a job, just like going through a loved one’s clothes, that can be so distressing for the person left behind, so if I can make things easier for everyone, I will.

Mind you, I have to psyche myself up to go into one of those second-hand shops because I sometimes just want to hit the sales women in there. The snobbery is unbelievable. I suppose I live in one of the worst areas, Hampstead and Highgate, but honestly it makes me so mad. The shops are often full of disgusting designer garb to start with, like the worst indulgences of Roberto Cavalli on speed, and they have the gall to turn their noses up at a brand new evening dress I bought in John Lewis – a new, size 12, black dress.

‘Sorry Madam, just not for us, I am afraid, and really a size too large,’ simpered the woman in a bright yellow dress which clung to her fat bits!

So what is it about Carl that has set me off now? There is something in his face that is captivating. He looks like a James Cagney character, the cheeky chappie who is hard to resist but not likely to give you a happy ending as a woman in his life.

Lynda's biological father Carl Hutton as a baby
Lynda as a baby,

Like father, like daughter: Lynda's biological father Carl Hutton as a baby, left, and Lynda, right

He was obviously doted on as a child. Certainly he seems to have told different ladies different stories, and there is evidence among all the paperwork that he had gone by several different names. But why, I wonder?

There is no evidence he was a criminal. He spent the last ten years of his life in New York working in security for the government, says a newspaper article. His death certificate says his occupation was custodian, which is another way of saying caretaker.

He suddenly came to life for me because, as I was sorting the photos, I laid his childhood picture next to one of my grandson Sacha and it was like the flash of a camera. The two of them as children look almost like twins. It took my breath away to see a replica of my father three generations later!

My real father lives on in the eyes of his great-grandson. What would he have made of me, I wonder? Now I long to talk to him, to show him what I have achieved.

He died young at 62, just as I will when I die at 66. Is he trying to get me up there with him to make up for all those years he never communicated with any of his children? I say up, it could be down, couldn’t it?

But in the meantime, I have one more thing to do and that is to write to the father I was never able to know and hope to change his legacy a little, from the sad and lonely death on a gurney in Bellevue Hospital, Manhattan on December 22, 1959, to the head of what is hoped will be a long line of strong and fulfilled Hutton men.

It is far from a letter of reproach, and it finishes like this:

I hope you can look down and see my world. I have worked so hard to get it right before I go and I hope there is a way you can look after them all, just as I will be doing from wherever I am off to. Who knows, we might just meet in the middle.

Lots of love, Lynda B x

Happy memories... Lynda shares her photo album 

Strictly never again:  I’ve always thought of myself as the worst dancer in the world but I gave it my all when I appeared on the show in 2009... although I found the whole thing overwhelmingly difficult. Would I do it again? I’d rather have pins stuck in my eyes!

Strictly never again:  I’ve always thought of myself as the worst dancer in the world but I gave it my all when I appeared on the show in 2009... although I found the whole thing overwhelmingly difficult. Would I do it again? I’d rather have pins stuck in my eyes!

How very un-PC: THIS was taken during a break in filming The Sweeney with John Thaw and I’m holding a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Very un-PC! Back then I smoked 40 a day – I’d been smoking since I was about 12 – though I haven’t touched a cigarette for years

How very un-PC: THIS was taken during a break in filming The Sweeney with John Thaw and I’m holding a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Very un-PC! Back then I smoked 40 a day – I’d been smoking since I was about 12 – though I haven’t touched a cigarette for years

Proud at the Palace: This is me after receiving an OBE earlier this year. I actually got the letter informing me late last year, while I was receiving chemo, and I had to keep mum, despite being terrible at keeping secrets! It was for both my acting and my charity work, which was rather nice

Proud at the Palace: This is me after receiving an OBE earlier this year. I actually got the letter informing me late last year, while I was receiving chemo, and I had to keep mum, despite being terrible at keeping secrets! It was for both my acting and my charity work, which was rather nice

Trials of an Oxo mum: I played the Oxo mum for 16 years but I get a bit sniffy because people sometimes forget that I’ve been an actress for 45 years. I was regarded as the lowest of the low by some in the business after doing the ads, and could never have auditioned for the RSC

Trials of an Oxo mum: I played the Oxo mum for 16 years but I get a bit sniffy because people sometimes forget that I’ve been an actress for 45 years. I was regarded as the lowest of the low by some in the business after doing the ads, and could never have auditioned for the RSC

Abridged from There's Something I've Been Dying to Tell you by Lynda Bellingham, published by Coronet on October 9 at £16.99. For a copy at the price of £15.30, visit mailbookshop.co.uk before October 12. P&P free for a limited time 

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