Rebecca Ferguson

Rebecca Louisa Ferguson Sundström^[3][4] was born on 19 October 1983^[5] in Stockholm,^[6] and grew up in the city’s Vasastan district.^[5] Her mother, Rosemary Ferguson,^[6] is English,^[7][8] and moved from Britain to Sweden at age 25.^[7] Her mother helped ABBA translate the lyrics from their 1974 album Waterloo into English^[9] and also appeared on the sleeve of the band's 1975 self-titled album.^{[10][better source needed]} Her father, Olov Sundström, is a Swedish businessman.^[6][11] Her parents never married^[12] and separated when she was 3 years old.^[13] Ferguson took her mother's surname as her stage name.^[14] Her maternal grandmother is Northern Irish, and her maternal grandfather is Scottish.^[8]

Ferguson attended an English-medium school in Sweden and was raised bilingual, speaking Swedish and English.^[15] She attended the Adolf Fredrik's Music School in Stockholm and graduated in 1999.^[16]

Ferguson was briefly signed to a modeling agency^[8] in her youth after her mother decided that she should be a model,^[17] but she disliked being photographed and turned down jobs.^[8] The modelling agency placed Ferguson in a portfolio titled "normal people" due to her not being tall nor slim enough for modelling.^[17] Her portfolio helped her get cast in her first acting job after it was found by a casting agency for a soap opera in Sweden.^[17] Ferguson then started her acting career aged 15.^[8] Unsure if she wanted to act, Ferguson took other casual work, including working at a nursery and at a daycare centre as a nanny,^[18] in retail stores, at a Korean restaurant,^[19] and as a cleaner in a hotel.^[18]

Ferguson has danced from a very early age; she danced ballet, tap-dancing, jazz, street funk, and tango. She taught Argentine tango at a dance company in Lund, Sweden for a few years^[20] while she continued her work on several short art film projects.^[21]

In 2007, Ferguson gave birth to her first child, a son, with her then-boyfriend Ludwig Hallberg,^[53] a psychosynthesis therapist.^[54] After her soap opera success and the birth of their son, she moved with Hallberg to Simrishamn, on the Swedish southeast coast.^[55] In 2012, Ferguson and Hallberg taught tango together in Österlen.^[55] Ferguson and Hallberg separated in April 2015.^[55]

Since 2016,^[56] Ferguson has been in a relationship with businessman Rory St. Clair Gainer,^[6][57] with whom she has a daughter who was born in May 2018.^[58] They married in December 2018.^[56] They have a house in Richmond, southwest London, owing to its proximity to Pinewood and Shepperton studios.^[57] Ferguson splits her time between London and a fishing village in Sweden, where her son lives with his father, and she maintains a close relationship with both of them.^[17]

Ferguson has a preference for going barefoot,^[59] a habit that influenced her creative choices for the costume of Rose the Hat in Doctor Sleep.^[60]

• List of barefooters
• List of Swedish actors