Known for her wonderful acting and focus on faith and family, actress Roma Downey has helped make films and series like “The Bible” and “Touched By an Angel” to create a deep cultural impact for the better, unlike much coming out of Hollywood. Speaking about the “why” behind her career in a recent interview, speaking about how her life led to her living the American dream, an incredible outcome for which she is extremely grateful.
Downey originally came to America from Ireland. Speaking about her transition from the Emerald Isle to America as a girl, Downey told CBN News in the interview, “They say, ‘You can take the girl out of Ireland, but you can’t take Ireland out of the girl.’ And I think that’s true, but I love America, and America has been so good to me.”
Continuing, she commented on how grateful she is to America for the opportunities it granted to her and her children, saying, “I’m so incredibly grateful to this country. My children are all American-born and my husband and I are both American citizens. We make our home between Southern California and the great state of Utah.”
Downey also spoke about her mother dying when she was just a ten-year-old girl, saying, “To say that we were heartbroken would be an understatement, because we didn’t even have the preparation of illness, which I know can be traumatic and painful for a child to see their parents suffer and go through a long illness. But … there was no warning, and so it was as if somebody just turned the lights out in our lives.”
Continuing, she added that it was utterly shocking for her mother to have died so suddenly when she was so young, saying, “If I was making a movie of my own life, my childhood would be in full technicolor, and then, when my mother died, it’s as if the movie then went into black and white.”
Then, commenting on how her faith helped her make it through those dark days, she said, “If we hadn’t had faith to lean into, if we hadn’t been people of faith, I don’t know how we would have coped,” she said. “I really don’t know. … As Christians and as believers, we have an understanding of the promises of Christ around this issue, and the promise of heaven, and the resurrection of the body, and all the things that we’ve been taught and believe.”
Using her stories from when she was a young girl to comment on how she believes in “the power of prayer” and how praying and religious grounding can help parents with their little kids before they go to sleep, saying, “I do believe in the power of prayer and … I begin and end my day with prayer. I ended my book with a prayer to encourage parents … to relax and create that peace in our little ones before they fall asleep.”
Watch her here:
Featured image credit: By Salvation Army USA West – JG1_7228, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47458719
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