Philomena Lee: "I'm a great believer that every single thing happens for a reason" Judi Dench, who plays Philomena on screen, is being tipped for Oscar recognition for her role in the story of Philomena's 50-year search for the son who was taken from her by nuns at an Irish convent and sold for adoption. "To have Judi Dench playing you - what more could a woman ask for?" says Philomena. She's a treasure, an absolute treasure and a perfect lady. We got to know one another before she started the film because she said she'd never played anyone who is still alive and she had to get to know me. We are kind of the same age group and she put me totally at my ease. Such a lovely, gentle lady. Philomena, Dame Judi and Steve Coogan, who co-wrote the screenplay and co-stars as Martin Sixsmith, the journalist who embarks on the search for Philomena's son with her, were talking over breakfast at a London hotel. The two stars confess to having been emotionally moved by Philomena's long and determined search for the son who was snatched from her when he was three years old. Unbeknown to Philomena, her son spent decades looking for her, too, but because of the nuns" refusal to divulge any information to either of them, they never met. But with the help of Sixsmith, Philomena eventually discovered the surprising details of her son's high-flying life as a White House lawyer and aide to George Bush. She learned that he was gay and had died of Aids and that his partner, fulfilling his dying wish, took his ashes to Ireland and buried them in the grounds of the convent where Philomena gave birth to him. "The awful part I get so upset about is that he died thinking I had abandoned him at birth, but there was nothing else I could do but let him go," said Philomena. I had nobody to help me and I asked the nuns several times to help find me a job in Ireland so I could take him with me but they said he had to be adopted into a good home. I remember how much I cried when he was taken away from me and I still think of him every day. But I'm not angry. I didn't tell anyone for so many years but I'm glad I did and eventually found out all about him, even though it took most of my life to do so. Imagine little old me having a son who was in the White House! Philomena's dogged determination, inner fortitude and her capacity for forgiveness have made a big impression on Dame Judi and Steve Coogan. "There are very, very few people of Philomena's magnitude and strength who are able to turn around at the end of the journey and forgive the nuns for what they did," says Dame Judi fondly. She didn't want to be angry and I know I couldn't live with that and be able to do that. Judi Dench and Steve Coogan in Philomena Coogan, who is half-Irish and describes himself as "a lapsed Catholic," is full of admiration for Philomena's ability to laugh and see the funny side of things. "Lots of people are angry and saddened when they hear what she went through but what intrigued me was how she could laugh at having gone through such a dark, sad, tragic experience," he says. I felt a connection and familiarity with her because I know lots of elderly Irish ladies like Philomena and I grew up around them. Philomena's remarkable story began at the age of six when she entered convent school in Ireland after her mother died. She left when she was 18, knowing little or nothing of the world, and met a boy who bought her a toffee apple on a warm evening at the county fair. "I didn't know a thing about the facts of life and I didn't know where babies came from," she said. When her pregnancy became obvious, her family disowned her and had her "put away" with the nuns at the convent of Roscrea in County Tipperary, one of thousands of Irish women taken from their homes and sent to convents in the 1950s and 1960s because the Catholic church said single mothers were moral degenerates who could not be allowed to keep their children. After her baby, Anthony, was born, the Mother Superior threatened Philomena with damnation if ever she breathed a word about her "guilty secret." Terrified, she kept it quiet for more than half a century. "It was such a sin," she said. It was an awful thing to have a baby out of wedlock. It was so ingrained deep down in my heart that I mustn't tell anybody. She was put to work in the convent laundry and while caring for Anthony she was made to sign a terrible document agreeing to give up her son and relinquishing all claims to him. "I begged them to please let me keep him but they told me I had to sign the papers," she says. Anthony was taken from her at Christmas 1955. She wasn't allowed to say goodbye to him but she saw him being bundled into the back of a big black car and driven away. "I cried and cried," she says. I was heartbroken. I missed him so much. I'd raised him for three and a half years. I was bitter and I lost my religion because of my heartbreak. I didn't know how they could have done it. She was sent to work in one of the convent's homes for delinquent boys in Liverpool, got married in 1959 and had two more children. For 30 years she worked as a nurse, mainly with psychiatric patients. "Over the years I stopped going to confession and communion but I always prayed for everybody, even the nuns," she says. Within my heart I never really lost my faith. I began to mellow because the patients had so many problems worse than I had so I went back to my religion and there I have stayed. Saying nothing to anybody she returned to the convent several times in desperate attempts to trace her son but the nuns refused to help her, merely showing her the document she had signed giving up all rights to him. Then, just before Christmas 2004, tipsy on sherry, she blurted out to her daughter the secret she had kept for 50 years. The daughter told a friend who contacted Martin Sixsmith, a former BBC foreign correspondent who had recently lost his job as a government communications officer. Intrigued by the story, Sixsmith set out to help Philomena in her search, following a trail which led to America and to the inner sanctum of the White House. The hunt took him through US newspaper obituary columns, state and church archives, adoption agencies, American university records and Republican party sources before it led to the end of the trail and the story's poignant, unexpected conclusion. Sixsmith wrote a book about Philomena and her search; Coogan happened to see newspaper article about it and optioned the rights to the book without reading it. He went to Judi Dench's home, told her the story and she instantly agreed to portray Philomena. "I was slightly daunted about sharing the screen with her because she's so incredibly charismatic and iconic but she made me feel very comfortable," says Coogan. We laughed and joked and talked in between takes and I felt I was spending the day with a little old Irish lady. It was only at the end of the day when she was transformed back into Judi Dench that I suddenly became intimidated again. Philomena, who now lives in St. Albans, originally wanted the book and film to use a different name to keep her identity hidden but now she is happy that everything is out in the open and she has no more secrets to keep. "I talk to Anthony every day and I have done all my life," she said. I prayed and prayed that one day I would find him and I know that somewhere up there he has found me. His partner gave me his Celtic ring which I wear all the time and every time I look at it I can say a little prayer for him. I'm a great believer that every single thing happens for a reason. We can't see it but our life has been marked out for us from the day we are born until the day we die. There was a reason for everything that has happened.