Adele's rough road to Oscar glory

Adele with her Oscar for best original song. Photo/AP

In their early twenties, most young women are just getting to grips with what they want out of life.

After her Oscars success on Sunday night, 24-year-old Adele Adkins could be said to have done it all.

But as she clutched her statuette the singer-songwriter confided she'd been left reflecting how different it all might have been, given her tough start in a cramped London flat.

The star, who won the Oscar for best song for her Bond theme Skyfall, said: 'When I got back to my dressing room I thought it could have been a bit grim my life. But it's not, it's fabulous!'

Adele was just three when her father left the family home and descended into alcoholism. They were estranged during her teenage years, when he was drinking as much as two litres of vodka a day.

He has since admitted: 'I was a rotten father at a time when she really needed me.'

Adele attended ten schools as her mother moved them from flat to flat, mostly around South London, trying to make ends meet with a string of jobs. Adele's Oscar triumph comes less than a week after Skyfall won her the Brit award for best single.

A few months earlier she had pulled off a Golden Globe in Hollywood for best film song as well as a statuette for best solo pop performance at the Grammys.

All this success has come as Adele underwent potentially career-wrecking throat surgery, found love with partner Simon Konecki and had her first baby, Angelo, last October.

As the ultimate award, Hollywood diva Barbra Streisand - now 70 - cooed at the Academy Awards: 'She's one of us.'

Adele struggled to hold back tears as she accepted the Oscar with song's co-writer Paul Epworth.

In her speech, she paid tribute to her management team and to Mr Konecki, saying: 'I love you baby.' Afterwards she admitted her accolades in the last few weeks had left her with a problem.

'I haven't decided where to put it [the Oscar] yet. I want it to be somewhere where I'll see it every day. Bathroom, bedroom, yeah, somewhere like that. I'll fathom it out when I get back home.'

She won't be the only Brit with space problems. Daniel Day-Lewis, 55, won his third best actor Oscar for his title role in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln.

He paid tribute to the support of his wife of 16 years Rebecca Miller given his tendency to be all-consumed in the characters he plays.

She's lived with 'some very strange men', he said. 'But luckily she's the versatile one in the family and she's been the perfect companion to all of them.' Katharine Hepburn holds the record for the most Oscars won by a single actor - she was awarded four for leading actress roles.

- Daily Mail