Meet Matty Healy’s famous mother Denise Welch

Matty Healy’s romance with Taylor Swift has set social media ablaze after sources claimed the pair are ‘madly in love’.

The couple was even photographed by a fan having a fun dinner date Swift’s associate Jack Antonoff and his fiancé Margaret Qualley at Casa Cipriani on Thursday.

But many American fans of the 1975 star will not know that he is the son of a British soap star with a very colorful past named Denise Welch.

The actress, 64, has openly shared her support for Matty and his music success, even posing for a photo with Taylor at one of her son’s concerts.

Who is Matty Healy’s mother, Denise Welch? MailOnline has everything you need to know…

Denise has appeared in a slew of British TV series and soap operas in a career spanning over 20 years.

Her most famous role is the villainous Natalie Barnes in Coronation Street, who made headlines thanks to her steamy on-screen fling with Kevin Webster.

Natalie joined the cast in 1997, after her romance with Kevin fizzled, and left the street for new pastures in 2000.

Denise also played a long-running role as Steph Haydock in the BBC drama Waterloo Road, and recently returned to the soap world as Trish Minniver in Hollyoaks between 2021 and 2022.

While Denise has continued to act steadily throughout her career, she is also a regular on British daytime television, as a star of the panel show Loose Women.

In the series, which is related to American favorite The View, Denise debates current issues with her co-stars and interviews celebrities.

Denise’s love life is almost as eventful as her characters’ soap opera storylines, who was first married to David Easter from 1983 to 1988.

She was then married to Tim Healy, Matty’s father from 1988 to 2012, with the actor a star of the iconic British sitcom Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.

The couple have remained on good terms after their 24-year marriage ended, and Denise married her current husband, Lincoln Townley, the following year.

Denise has also had her fair share of personal issues, battling alcoholism and mental illness, including depression, and has been sober for 11 years.

In an excerpt from her book, The Unwelcome Visitor: Depression and How I Survive It, the loose women panelist admitted that she tried to fight her loneliness with alcohol, but it left her in “a dead zone.”

The TV star also claimed that at one point during the filming of Coronation Street, her depression got so bad that she hid in her dressing room or pretended to be asleep so she wouldn’t have to interact with others.

In an excerpt from her book obtained by The Mirror, Denise explained: ‘Because of my mental illness, there were times when I didn’t know if I was going to make it.

Alcohol made it worse. I drank a lot, reached for everything to take away the pain and keep me going… to lift the isolation and loneliness. It put me in a kind of dead zone.

“For the two or three hours I drank alcohol, it destroyed my disease. That’s why so many people with depression drink.’

Denise was diagnosed with clinical depression after Matty was born in 1989.

She went on to say that she wasn’t sure if her alcoholism caused her depression or vice versa, claiming that one problem fuels the other.

The actress also explained that Princess Diana’s death in 1997 made a deep impression on her, causing her to “beg to cry with grief” and see everything as “red” as she was consumed with fear.

Describing several later mental breakdowns, Denise added that she realized she needed help while on vacation in Turkey, and turned to fellow Corrie star Kevin Kennedy to help her with AA.

The ex-Waterloo Road star spoke candidly about her ‘unwelcome visitor’ and the challenge of being ‘kinder’ to herself in a post shared on social media last September.

She also revealed that her depressive episodes cause the color to “drain from her life” within 30 seconds, leaving her “dead behind the eyes.”

The media personality previously turned to self-medication of her depression with drink and drugs.

Despite her teenage son Louis finding their sober household “a little boring,” she insists she’s having more fun now than she did when she drank.

Denise said on the daytime talk show Lorraine in 2018: “We are very open about it. It’s clear that Louis is growing up in a frugal household that he’s sure is a bit boring at times, while I don’t want to close my eyes to parties of 84 people strolling through my house.

“It has to be something good in the end and being sober doesn’t mean being boring, I’m having more fun now than when I was drinking.”

Earlier this week, DailyMail.com exclusively obtained the first photos of Swift and Healy together in the wake of the romance rumors.

And just days later, a source told Page Six that the pair “hugged and kissed” as they enjoyed dinner together.

The couple arrived at Taylor’s condo at 12:30 a.m. Sunday morning after her Eras concert in Nashville, Tennessee.

Last week, it was first reported that Matty and Taylor were planning to debut their romance by bringing him onstage to perform several songs at her shows in Nashville.

Matty did perform on Saturday’s show with Taylor’s opening act, but remained in the audience during the Mean singer’s stage time.

Whether he will jump on stage again to perform with the Blank Space hitmaker remains to be seen.