As she celebrates the release of her extraordinary autobiographical film Somebody’s Daughter, Zara Phillips offers up some tough love truths that fly in the face of the often cheery, sanitized way adopted children (and other beings) are depicted in Disney films and other media. From her years of advocacy,studying contemporary sociological research and personal experiences as an adopted person herself, the passionate lifelong advocate for adoptees knows that even well into adulthood, their existential struggles of feeling like outsiders with little known stories of their history and birth parents makes them at least four times more likely to attempt suicide. They are also much more inclined to turn to addiction as a coping mechanism, as Zara did in her teens and early 20s.
“An adoptee is prone to suffer the only trauma in the world where the victim is supposed to feel grateful,” says Zara, who was adopted by a Jewish couple in the UK and raised in Totteridge, North London with a brother whom they also adopted. “I’ve spoken countless times at treatment centers where some 10 percent of those enrolled in treatment or therapy are adopted yet never asked if they had been adopted or were in thefoster care system. People always talk cheerily about wanting to adopt a child, but few seem to talk about what happens psychologically and physiologically to a baby when it’s separated from its birth mother and therefore never able to bond with her.
“When a child is separated from its mother and never experiences skin to skin contact with her, severing the bond, its brain doesn’t develop as it should, there is now scientific evidence to back this up. The brain chemistry is different,” she adds. “For a lot of us, using drugs and alcohol was a way of trying to replace the natural, healthy chemistry we would have had and the feeling of wanting to be connected. Every human being has cellular memory, long before a child can form words, its body remembers the separation. No matter how loving our adoptive families are, many of us grow up desperately trying to fit in and belong, terrified of forming attachments while desperately wanting them. If our mothers gave us away, can anyone ever want us?”
Somebody’s Daughter – and the 2018 book and 2022 one-woman show the film is based on – focusses on Zara’s personal journey of overcoming early addiction, navigating her life and meeting her birth father after many years and struggles after connecting with her birth mother. The project’s true driving force is tofacilitate honest, vulnerable conversations about adoption. Too many people, she says, are ignoring these important issues.
“I want little adoptees to have a chance to be heard in a way kids of my generation were not,” she says. “If I can help one adoptee feel validated, and one parent to look at his or her kid and understand the grieving process, that would make the film and all of my related media endeavors worthwhile.”
Even with all these heavy-duty emotional issues coloring its themes and overall aesthetic, Somebody’s Daughter – directed by Liam Galvin from a script by Zara, who also stars – is far from a maudlin, preachy docudrama about the problems of her life due to being adopted. Joyfully and entertainingly, it’sexactly the opposite – a bright and engaging, fast-paced blend of pathos and cheeky British humor, soulful introspective moments complemented by whimsical, hilariously over the top dramatizations which all help Zara come to terms with the challenges that have plagued her all her life.
One of the funniest scenes comes after she learns, through a series of AncestryDNA matches with a biological sister she never knew existed, that her birth father Vittorio was Italian. She develops a sudden cultural attraction to crosses, and when her adoptive Jewish mother sees one, she responds histrionically…just as one might expect. Zara also playfully re-creates a moment when she’s getting ready to meet Vittorio, who she learns lives relatively close to her in suburban New Jersey, at a local Dunkin Donuts. She turns the moment of struggling to pick out the right outfit to meet a man she has never met at a donut shop into an outrageously enjoyable scene, fully conveying her fears and trepidation even as she makes us laugh.
Throughout her journey, she is buoyed by the witty encouragement of two middle aged guys she originally met in her first AA meeting, who serve as an amusing “Greek Chorus” to bounce her thoughts off. It’s also heartwarming at the end of the film to see Zara spending time and becoming friends with another of Vittorio’s biological daughters. As sweet and charming as he was as an old man at Dunkin’ Donuts, he was quite the playboy in his day and fathered seven children from six different mothers – three Brits and four Americans. Two of them, including Zara, were adopted.
While most of the interaction with Vittorio in the film is spirited and reveals her overall elation that she was able to find him after so many years, Zara admits she felt heartbroken that she missed out on so many potential years of contact with him – and the reality that, as the product of a long forgotten one night stand, she had felt like a “mistake” for much of her life. “After I met him,” she says, “my happiness of reconnecting was tempered by nights I would stay awake and feel like a random puppy in a litter. It helped getting in touch with my spiritual side, which made me realize over time that I was meant to be here, and I am not a mistake. And my three children are definitely meant to be here.”
In addition to acting and writing, Zara is also a talented singer and songwriter who launched her career in the 80s, appearing in music videos and providing backing vocals on tour with Bob Geldof, Matt Bianco, David Essex and Nick Kamen. While taking some years away from creative endeavors to raise a family, she came back strong in the 2000s, releasing two albums(When The Rain Stops and You. Me & Us) produced by Ted Perlman, whose multi-faceted musical resume includes Whitney Houston, Bob Dylan and Chicago; earning a Best Homegrown Documentary honor for her 2008 film Roots Unknown at the Garden State Film Festival; and publishing in 2008 her first book Mother Me, a compelling memoir about her ongoing struggles as an adoptee now raising a family of her own.
A few years later, Zara’s song “I’m Legit,” co-written with Darryl McDaniels (DMC of Run-DMC), was a successful single in the adoption world and beyond. In 2014, Zara’s one woman show Beneath My Father’s Sky, directed by Eliza and Eric Roberts won Best Direction at NYC’s United Solo Festival and was performed in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Connecticut and London in 2016. During this era, she was presented with an Angel in Adoption Award by the Congressional Coalition of Adoption Institute. Her most recent album, released in
2020, is Meditation and Kitkats, and she currently tours and performs with her husband, British folk-rock legend Richard Thompson, who scored Somebody’s Daughter.
Not long after she finished a new novel about a girl trying to find her father, Zara reconnected with Vittorio, causing her to rewrite the project as a second memoir, which became Somebody’s Daughter. Published by John Blake/Bonnier, it was released first in the UK, then the U.S. in 2018. She wrote andperformed her one woman play based on it in England and the U.S. in 2022.
Beyond her many creative expressions and projects, Zara has spent years facilitating workshops with adopted families and mental health professionals. In 2021, she posted an extensive YouTube discussion with Gabor Mate, a prominent Canadian physician with a special interest in childhood development andtrauma. Zara has also given talks for the OLLIE Foundation, a UK-based suicide prevention and well-being charity.
“I’m very grateful to be connected with and to have developed such rich relationships with some of my biological siblings and family all made possible by the modern miracle of AncestryDNA,” Zara says. “It was so much fun and very cathartic making the film Somebody’s Daughter, accomplishing what we did on a tight budget with some wonderful British actors. I feel as though all the work and advocacy I’ve done in the realm of adoptees has now culminated in this very special project.”
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Photo Credit: Zara Phillips
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