Susan Sarandon: 'Who do I despise? The Bush regime'

What is your earliest memory?

I would have been about four years old and I was at home in Jackson Heights, New York, sitting on the steps, staring at the wall above the staircase and imagining I was seeing films.

What sort of a child were you?

I spoke very early and was very precocious in the way that little girls are when they’re the first child. I can remember my dad would make kites out of brown paper and we would fly them in the park across from our apartment building. One day the kite smashed and my father said my little chin was quivering, but I turned and said to him, ‘Don’t worry Daddy, it will be all right.’ I think that says a lot. You should be bursting into tears, not telling your father it will be all right.

What is the worst thing anyone has ever said to you?

In the lead up to the Iraq War someone called me an ‘American hating ****.’ I was with my son and it was in the middle of the day. I wasn’t even participating in anything political at the time – at least then you can expect things like that. It really caught me unawares.

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