Danielle Meagher Collins was getting ready for bed when her dad called from the family home in Dublin to drop a bombshell. ‘He said, “Don’t make a big deal out of this, but I met your mother when she was four months pregnant”.’
In shock, Danielle, then 43, asked the obvious question: ‘So who is my dad?’
Her father’s tone was perfunctory, she recalls: ‘He said, “You’ll have to talk to your mum about that”.’ With that, the conversation was over and Danielle was left to cry until dawn. ‘I spent the whole night grieving the different life I could have had, the dad who didn’t know about me.’
She had never felt close to her parents and her father had made it clear he was uncomfortable discussing the subject further. Even after her mother, Eileen, finally admitted, four days later, that she’d spent the weekend with a man called Todd in 1974, Danielle did not feel she could remonstrate with them.
To avoid her being registered as illegitimate in the strictly Catholic country, her parents explained, Dominic had been named as Danielle’s father on her birth certificate.
Six years on, it’s a revelation Danielle, now 49, is still grappling with.
Danielle Meagher Collins was 43 when her dad called from the family home in Dublin to drop a bombshell – that he wasn’t her real father
‘My entire existence has been based on a lie,’ she says through tears. ‘It’s debilitating. Without the truth, you are nothing.
‘I don’t want to throw my parents under the bus but I have to be truthful. I feel betrayed. They lied to me. That was traumatic.’
The trauma was compounded by the fact that little over a year after Danielle tracked down her biological father, Todd, who had bowled her over with his kindness, he died of heart failure. ‘I felt robbed of the life I could have had,’ she says.
A former Harley Street dentist and aesthetic clinician, who appeared on reality television series Dublin Wives and Celebrity Big Brother, and later went on to become a successful stand-up comedian in America, Danielle is chatty and outspoken – the opposite, she says, of her strait-laced, upper-class family.
Her great-uncle was Irish revolutionary Michael Collins, and her parents are lawyers. Danielle, who has two younger brothers, now 46 and 31, was privately educated at Mount Anville school in Dublin, whose alumnae include former Irish president Mary Robinson. Her summers were spent at the family holiday home in West Cork.
‘I was blessed with a good education,’ says Danielle, but ‘I always felt something was missing.’ She bore no physical resemblance to her parents, but more concerning to her was the difference in temperament.
‘The family are all lawyers and politicians. I wanted to do ballet.’ Her parents paid for dance classes, ‘but I was the only kid there with no tutu and ballet shoes’, she says. ‘There was no support. There was no one in the family going to be a playwright or an actor.’
When, as a teenager, her feelings of being ‘different’ from the rest of the family led her to ask if she was adopted, her parents ‘shut down’ the question, dismissing it as ‘silly nonsense’. But she ‘didn’t feel Irish’ and dreamed of running away to California, where she wanted to be a television presenter. Initially, however, she pursued academia, in part to make her parents proud.
A degree in aerospace engineering was followed by a degree in dentistry and a Masters in aesthetic medicine. In 2007 she set up a Harley Street clinic offering tooth whitening and Botox, splitting her time between London and Dublin.
She became something of a celebrity pioneer of Botox and in 2011 appeared in Dublin Wives – a reality series modelled on America’s NBC hit The Real Housewives.
Little over a year after Danielle tracked down her biological father, Todd, he died of heart failure
Witty and charismatic on screen, she was invited to appear on Celebrity Big Brother in 2013. Her parents were ‘horrified’. ‘I was made to feel embarrassed, belittled, bullied out of doing television. Dad said, ‘You had your shot – you were useless’.’
Yet Danielle longed to return to the entertainment world. In 2016 she sold her clinic and booked a flight to Los Angeles, where she spent three weeks and felt a sense of peace. ‘I’ve never felt like I belonged anywhere. This was different,’ she says.
Over the next two she spent more time in the city before moving there permanently in 2018 to fulfil a secretly long-held dream of becoming a stand-up comedian.
When, later that year, she confided in her dad’s cousin that she felt her parents were keeping a secret from her, he told her about a letter he’d received from them in 1978.
Though it revealed Eileen was pregnant with Danielle’s brother, there was no mention of Danielle, then three. In fact, her uncle admitted, he had not known she even existed. Feeling ever more suspicious, the following year she sent a barrage of text messages to her parents pretending she’d done a DNA test. ‘I said somebody had better tell me the truth.’
Hours later her father phoned and dropped the bombshell. ‘The worst thing,’ she says, ‘was the lack of duty of care, the suggestion I was being overly dramatic.’ It was four days – and a day before Danielle’s planned visit to Dublin – before her mother answered the phone, at which point she seemed keen to downplay the situation.
When she was young, Danielle’s feelings of being ‘different’ from the rest of the family led her to ask if she was adopted. Her parents ‘shut down’ the question
‘She said, ‘Isn’t it great Dad told you about that? I’m going to do pork steak for you for dinner.’ I felt numb.’
When she was finally standing in front of her mother, Danielle begged Eileen for the identity of her biological father. ‘She said, ‘His name was Todd.’ I said, ‘That’s an American name.’ She said, ‘Yes, you’re half American’.’
Her relief that she felt an affiliation with America for a reason was compounded with sadness for the loss of the woman she thought she was. ‘I started wailing. I felt complete grief.’
Eileen was 18 when she met Todd at a music festival in County Kerry. He told her he was 17; they had discussed sharing the same birthday – July 14. ‘Mum said, ‘You’re probably not going to find him’,’ recalls Danielle.
Eileen provided no further context or what it felt like keeping the secret for so many years. ‘She hasn’t apologised to this day.’
Danielle acknowledged it must have been ‘terrifying’ being a pregnant teenager in a country where abortion was illegal. ‘She was brave to keep me. I appreciate that.’ Of course, she adds, ‘parents never realised DNA testing was going to come along’. At first following her parents’ admission, she says: ‘I felt I needed to people please – isn’t it great he chose to be my dad?’
The next day she broke the news to her youngest brother, who assured her she was ‘still his sister’. However her relationship with her middle brother became strained: ‘When he found out I was only his half-sister, I think it was almost that he had an excuse to not bother with me.’
Back in Los Angeles, Danielle sent off saliva samples through DNA sites and scoured the electoral roles of every state in America, looking for men called Todd born on July 14. Searching ‘like a lunatic for 16 hours a day’, she initially sent her mother pictures of potential biological fathers, asking if they looked familiar, until her mother texted to say she was unwilling to help. ‘She said, ‘It’s your journey now’.’
After almost a month of searching, her phone pinged with DNA test results. She’d been matched to an uncle of hers, Michael Bray, in California. On his Facebook page, he mentioned his brother, Todd Bray.
‘I thought I was going to faint,’ says Danielle, who paid a (legal) search company to get a landline number for Todd and called him at 8.20pm that evening.
Todd’s wife, Alida, 59, answered the phone. ‘I said, ‘My name is Danielle. I was born in Dublin. I think Todd is my biological dad’.’ Alida put Danielle on speaker phone, at which point she apologised for calling so late, ‘but I said I couldn’t wait any longer’.
‘I’ve been looking for you for 29 days, six hours and 42 minutes,’ I told Todd. He laughed at the specificity of it. He said he’d been married for 30 years, never had any children and concluded, ‘I’m sorry, but I think you’ve got it wrong’. But when Danielle said her mum had met her birth dad at a festival, both Todd and Alida said ‘1974’ and ‘Eileen’. Todd had told his wife that this was when he’d lost his virginity. ‘He said, ‘Oh my God!’ They stayed with me on the phone for 45 minutes.’
The next day she and Todd talked for two hours. He told her he’d met her mother at sunrise when they’d both lost their friends, that he hadn’t been 17, but 16. It hadn’t crossed his mind that Elieen could have got pregnant.
Todd had been a set designer on films, which paved the way for an instant creative connection with his long-lost child. He and Alida, an art curator, were ‘delighted’ to discover he had a daughter, says Danielle: ‘They took to me like a duck to water.’
Three weeks after near daily emails, Danielle flew to San Francisco to meet him. She told her parents back in Dublin in the taxi to the airport: ‘Mum wanted nothing to do with it. Dad said to call him when I got back.’ Of meeting Todd, she recalls: ‘We hugged. He said, “You are so brave to fly here.” It was the weirdest day of my life.’
Todd had congenital heart failure – a health problem Danielle says highlights her right to know her medical history – his age and ill health making their physical similarities less obvious. Yet in pictures from his youth, his blond hair was familiar, says Danielle, the baby-blue eyes the same.
A former Harley Street dentist and aesthetic clinician, Danielle appeared on reality television series Dublin Wives (pictured top) and Celebrity Big Brother, and later went on to become a successful stand-up comedian in America
While Todd was her father, he was also ‘a complete stranger,’ she stresses: ‘It’s confusing. I didn’t know how to process it.’
They discovered a mutual love for the sitcom Father Ted and when they ordered a takeaway and Danielle requested a bowl to eat it from both Todd and Alida burst into laughter, because Todd always insisted that, too.
Todd, who was born in California, had moved to Ireland with his family aged 12. He had stayed there until he was 18 and later spent summers in West Cork. ‘So all my summers we were just an hour away,’ says Danielle, who stayed in touch with Todd over the coming months.
Todd asked her to visit again, but she stalled a second trip. ‘I felt conflicted – that I was cheating on my Irish dad.’ It’s something she now regrets.
One evening, in July 2019, Todd wrote to her that one of them should write about their reunion. The following morning his brother Michael texted to say Todd had died in his sleep, aged just 61.
She has yet to meet Todd’s extended family, who have professed a desire to see her, because she admits that being lied to for so long means, ‘I don’t trust anyone.’
She has barely spoken to her parents for two years and no longer receives birthday cards. Christmas goes unacknowledged.
‘It’s sad and painful,’ she says. Yet she is unwilling to swallow their secret any longer. ‘Every day I look in the mirror and say, “My name is Danielle Collins” to show myself that I am proud of who I am. I am proud to be illegitimate. The truth will set me free.’
- Dominic and Eileen’s names have been changed.