Happiness is… My parents being proud of me

“No matter how old you are, you always want your parents’ approval. Even now, whenever I’m in a TV show, I ring my dad afterwards to see what he thought and to make sure he thought it was good. Then I can relax.

“I think it’s because in school I was never the high achiever, I was never very academic, and so I never did anything where I thought, ‘Oh, my parents are really proud of me.’ When I started acting, that was the first time I had the feeling that they’d be proud of me. That’s what I continue to strive for – for them to be proud.

“My parents have always said the same thing: as long as me and my brother are OK, they’re happy. My mum and dad got divorced when I was nine and my brother was seven, and all they strived to do was to make sure we weren’t affected. My brother’s a secondary school teacher; he’s done really well and I think they must look at us and say, ‘They’re all right, they’re settled and happy.’ Although they’re still always worried about us – like parents always are.”

Family ties are so important to Keegan that she recently went on BBC ancestry show Who Do You Think You Are? to discover more. In Manchester, while researching her dad’s side of the family tree, she discovered a connection with the suffragette movement – not only was her great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth Kirwan, a suffragist, she was also a colleague of Emmeline Pankhurst. In fact Pankhurst registered Elizabeth’s daughter’s birth. The series also revealed that Keegan is something of a history geek.

Michelle Keegan on confidence, the suffragettes and what happiness means to her