12:59 07 June 2015
Ellie Goulding has opened up about her “unhappy childhood” and growing up on a council estate after her father left when she was just five years old. She also shared how her crippling insecurities threatened to stop her from realising her dreams.
Speaking in a recent tell-all interview with Elle magazine, Ellie described how she transformed her life by learning to change the way she spoke by watching news readers and seeing how her friends dressed – in order to get into a good local school.
"I wasn't a happy child," Ellie admitted to the mag. "I felt different to everyone else. I'd separate everything. I'd have friends from my council estate and then these middle-class friends from school who I'd never let come back to my house."
She went on: "I was a classic angsty teenager. I was unhappy. I didn't like my stepfather because he just wasn't very nice to any of us. He wasn't horrible, he just wasn't interested."
She also revealed that she still communicates with her mum and that she hasn’t spoken to her biological father since she was 19.