Dominic West’s boarding school trauma

Dominic West says going to boarding school was as upsetting as when his parents died.

The ‘Finding Dory’ star attended England’s prestigious Eton when he was younger and he found it very traumatic being so far away from his family.

He told Radio Times magazine; "I got used to the idea of leaving home very young, when I was sent away to boarding school. That had a major effect on me – it was the worst feeling I have ever had, very similar to the grief when my parents died.

"It’s the same thing really; you think you’ve lost your parents. I learned to bury the emotional effects of that and then I went to drama school and had to dig it all up again."

Dominic’s father, George died in 2005 after suffering a stroke while his mother, Moya, died at home in 2010 after a long battle with cancer.

The ‘Affair’ star – who has three children, Dora, nine, Senan, seven, Francis, six, and Rose, two, with wife Catherine Fitzgerald as well as a 17-year-old daughter Martha, from a previous relationship – also revealed how he his very proud of his roots, as he grew up in Sheffield, north England.

Dominic, 46, said: "I live in London so I can be with my family as much as possible, but I’m very proud of coming from Yorkshire. When I meet anyone from Sheffield, they look at me sceptically, as if to say, ‘You don’t come from Yorkshire.’

"But I do. It used to bug me that ‘Old Etonian’ was the constant prefix to my name, but everyone has to come out from some pigeonhole and that’s not a bad one to have to overcome."