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John Hurt has just suffered his most painful experience since a newly hatched space monster burst out of his stomach in the first of the Alien films 30 years ago.
The actor has been told that he is not Irish.
A family legend had maintained that Hurt's great-grandmother
Emma Stafford was the illegitimate daughter of an aristocrat from County Sligo. She was, indeed, illegitimate, but the place whence she originated has a less glamorous ring than Sligo. She came from south London - Croydon, to be exact.
The actor, who lived in Ireland for years and identified strongly with the country, has discovered the disappointing truth after taking part in the BBC1 ancestry-tracing programme Who Do You Think You Are?.
"I am not who I believed I was," he said. "That really upsets me. As far as I was concerned I was Irish. My disappointment was that they had managed to prove that the one thing I thought I did have - Irish blood, I haven't got any."
The Hollywood star and his brother, Michael, a Benedictine monk from Glenstal Abbey in Ireland, were taken by the programme-makers to Westport House, home of the current Marquess of Sligo, in search of their ancestry.
The Hurt brothers, whose father was an Anglican vicar in Derbyshire, did not know the name of the aristocrat whose descendants they assumed they were, but a historian hired by the programme reckoned that the prime suspect was Howe Peter Browne, second Marquess of Sligo, who was known to have had other illegitimate children.
Later in the programme Mr Hurt came across Emma's marriage certificate, which states her birthplace as Croydon. Her baptismal record, at Croydon parish church, gives her parents as Edward and Emma Stafford, with no hint of an Irish connection.
Then the story becomes foggy. There is a record of the young Emma Stafford attending a local boarding school, but no other evidence that her parents existed.
It emerged that there is a scandalous secret in the Hurt family history, but not as glamorous as the one he was brought up to believe. Other actors have explored ancestral links with Ireland in the series. David Tennant, who plays Dr Who, learned that his maternal grandmother, Nellie Blair, was born in Derry and met her husband, Archie Macleod, a footballer, after he moved from Scotland to play for Derry City.
Jeremy Irons learned that his grandmother's family were landowners from Cork. Barbara Windsor, of EastEnders, also had a family link to County Cork. Amanda Redman, of At Home with the Braithwaites, learned that her maternal great-great-grandfather was born in County Wexford.
Other actors who could not claim to be Irish have at times worked hard to sound it on screen, though it is unlikely that any has matched the linguistic skill of "Richard the Spy", who infiltrated English forces fighting American rebels, led by George Washington.
Captured by the English, he escaped execution by masquerading as an Irishman, imitating the brogue so accurately that they were unable to convict him. He died a prisoner, claiming to the last that he was Irish.
- Independent