Samuel Johnson has revealed the heartbreaking life event that inspired his sister Hilde Hinton to write her debut novel.
In a post shared on Facebook, the actor admitted opened up about his mother’s death by suicide and the impact it’d had on Hilde.
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The Secret Life of Us star wrote in the post, ‘I’ll cut to the chase. Mum killed herself, finally, after countless attempts, by the time I was 3.
‘By all accounts I was lucky not to grow up with her. She was extremely unstable and found life to be a most dreadful and onerous undertaking. My sister Hilde found her dead. She was 12 years old.’
The post was accompanied by a picture of Samuel and his sister Hilde posing next to her book, The Loudness of Unsaid Things.
‘Hilde was late that day. She blamed herself of course. Which 12 year old wouldn’t? What if she had’ve gone straight up those housing commission stairs, instead of delaying, delaying delaying, because she didn’t know which mum she was going to get that day? At that dreadful moment, she came to understand the importance of a minute,’ it reads.
‘For Hilde, a minute is a long time. Hilde taught Connie about the importance of minutes while I was off grid being a delebrity fuckup. Then Connie got sick and she taught me, and us, that now is awesome. But our ‘Now is Awesome’ ethos is born from Hilde’s understanding of the significance of each single minute.’
The post also gives background information into how Hilde came to write the book, with Sam explaining that he ‘challenged her’ to leave her job and go on the road with him so she could write more.
‘I promised they’d be the best minutes of her life. That now could be more awesome. My argument? That until she threw away time completely she’d be stuck with a ticking in her head forever.
‘She didn’t need much encouragement. Before I knew it she was on the road with me, she’d written her first novel and she had bagged a high end publisher. My big sister Hilde punched out no ordinary novel, at the tender age of 50, between Love Your Sister fundraisers. I like to think we nourished her towards it.’
Sam also explained how Hilde had been a huge support to him and his late sister Connie as they were growing up.
‘Our most brilliant sibling. The one who, behind the scenes, has always shone the brightest. The one who showed Connie and me how to be. Our mum, when mum left.’
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