Early Life
McCutcheon was born as Martine Kimberley Sherri Ponting at the Salvation Army Mother's Hospital in Hackney, London, when her mother, Jenny Tomlin, was 19. She endured a turbulent early childhood due to the abusive and irrational behaviour of her father, Thomas Hemmings. Her earliest memory of her father is him dangling her over a balcony by her ankles, 30 feet up in the air, threatening to drop her unless her mother did what he wanted. Despite Hemmings leaving when McCutcheon was 2 years old, he would return periodically to threaten her mother so her early years were spent running and hiding in order to escape him. When McCutcheon was nine, her mother won sole custody and an injunction was made against Hemmings seeing McCutcheon until she was 18.
When McCutcheon was 10, her mother met and married window cleaner John McCutcheon (Martine's stepfather) which led to Martine taking her stepfather's surname. McCutcheon has a younger half-brother. She knew she wanted to be a performer from an early age but, as her family could not afford the fees for a drama school, she had to find an alternative method to learn her trade. McCutcheon met a woman at a local dance class who had been to the Italia Conti stage school, and she suggested that the school would be a good environment for her. After a persuasive letter from McCutcheon, a Church of England trust agreed to sponsor her. She trained after school and every Saturday (learning tap, ballet, jazz and drama) in order to catch up with the more privileged children who were competing with her for a place at the prestigious school.
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