This was published 7 years ago
Offspring's T.J Power: How losing my mother as a teenager changed me
What I know about women: T.J Power, 30, Married, best know for playing Will Bowen in Offspring.
My maternal grandmother, Betty Maloney, lost her husband and her daughter – my mother Jayne – four months apart. I was 17 and in year 12 when Mum died from cancer at the age of 49.
My nan was there for us and we were there for her. It was a tough time, but I remember her making meals and everyone helping my family as much as they could.
T.J. Power.
I had two godmothers, my mum's close friends, who helped out too, and my eldest sister Kristy really stepped up and supported my dad Gerard to carry the burden of our loss.
Nan died 18 months ago at the age of 95. She was an amazing woman. I always remember her baking scones and sweets. I would help her with the gardening and take her shopping. She was kind-natured and a forgiving person. She was a doctor by profession, but didn't practise in my lifetime.
We'd spend Christmas holidays in Gundagai with my paternal grandparents who lived on a farm. Nan Grace was a strong woman who always had a smile in her eyes. She was calm, in control and was my grandfather Art's sidekick, helping with various chores around the farm.
My mum Jayne was a relief schoolteacher. Once she took my kindergarten class and I thought I was the duck's nuts, bragging about who was coming to be our teacher. I thought I was the king.
Later in her life, Mum worked with Dad in his financial planning business which gave her flexibility to raise me and my two older sisters. Mum was sharp and resourceful and could make something out of nothing.
I remember Mum's face when I got my first acting gig. She was in tears of joy, jumping up and down. It was for something stupid, like a training video for a fast-food chain, and I was probably 15. She was very proud. She would drive me to acting classes twice a week, and often it was a 2½-hour round trip from where we lived in Arcadia, north-west of Sydney.
One day we were in the car with Mum when Billy Joel's Only the Good Die Young came on the radio. She was driving my sisters and I around, and looked at us and said: "You kids be bad, be very bad." She had just been diagnosed with cancer.
I was always scared of my eldest sister Kristy, who is five years older than me. She has chilled out now and we're good friends. My other sister, Tanya, has middle-child syndrome. My first memory of her is when I heard a crash in the lounge room and I ran to see what had happened. She looked at me with ice-cold eyes and said it was my fault that she broke something.
My sisters ganged up on me. They used to take advantage of how obedient I was until I realised, as a teenager, that I didn't have to put up with it.
After Mum died, Dad married her friend Pauline, who is a great woman with four kids of her own. She makes sure everyone feels important and loved and is good at hosting family events for birthdays and Easter – she always puts on a big spread. She's a perfectionist and when I stay over, the guest room is immaculately made with colour-coded cushions in the right place
I was never that great with girls. I was terrible, actually. I had my first girlfriend when I was in year 7 at Galston High School. She was very calm and took control of the dating situation. I was trying to act cool, but I definitely wasn't. No doubt I got the kissing wrong.
I only had one serious relationship before I met my wife, Kathryn Sgroi, when I was 20 and studying at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA). We've been together for 10 years and are expecting our first child in July. We started dating in 2007 and married in December 2014 beside a river in Leeton, NSW, where her family is from.
Kathryn is a talented woman. She is busy working on film and television productions in Los Angeles and is also finishing her Masters in primary teaching. She inspires me every day and I can't imagine my life without her.
I met a great female mentor, Leith McPherson, at WAAPA. She changed everything for me by giving me an appreciation of the craft of acting, and of Shakespeare as a text. We are good friends and she was kind enough to star in my short film Your Call Is Important to Us, which I just filmed in Melbourne.
Joining the cast of Offspring has been a great opportunity. Working alongside actors like Kat Stewart and Asher Keddie is a highlight. They are fine examples of working wonder women because they both have kids and lives outside of acting.
This job isn't nine to five – you work all hours and have homework, too. And when Kat and Asher come on set they are always "on". They've made joining the show easy for me.
Offspring returns this Wednesday at 8.30pm on Network Ten.