Kate Winslet cries as she learns of the hardship her ancestors suffered as she delves into her Swedish heritage in Who Do You Think You Are?
The Titantic star, 43, is devastated to hear how her mother’s forefathers struggled to survive as a series of crop failures blighted the country in the 19th century.
Oscar-winner Kate discovers her four-times great grandfather, Anders Jonsson, was a stable groom on an estate where workers were paid in tokens rather than cash so they could never leave.
Anders and wife Anna had five children but in 1831, in the grip of famine, their three-month-old son Gustaf died from malnutrition.
Five months later Anders and another man were arrested for stealing three barrels of potatoes.
Kate says: “Good for you – I’d have stolen the potatoes too.”
But when told he went to jail, she adds: “That’s horrible. He was trying to do the right thing for his children.
"They say he’s got a ‘weak body constitution’ – he was starving.”
Anders was also sentenced to a flogging when it emerged he and his pal had also stolen two beehives.
But the punishment was never given as he contracted typhus in prison and died aged 43.
Kate weeps, saying: “I feel so angry now. It’s just not fair. His poor wife lost her baby and her husband within six months and was left with four children, including my great, great, great grandfather Johan Christian.
"Johan would have been five, the same age as my youngest. The thought of Bear being without his dad… oh my God, I can’t stand it.”
Johan joined the Swedish navy, with a salary and a small cottage where he lived with his wife Anna.
But more tragedy hit as their first child, a girl, died at 17 days old and his second, a boy, succumbed to smallpox in 1853 aged seven months.
Kate asks the historian: “Can you tell me something nice now?”
But things got worse for Johan as he was discharged from the navy in 1859 for “embezzling from the crown”, and flogged 40 times.
But he then became a tailor, a trade he passed on to his only surviving child, Kate’s great-great grandfather Alfred Johansson Lidman, who moved to London and set up on Savile Row.
Kate tells the show, which airs on BBC1 next month, that she had no idea of mum Sally’s Swedish ancestry.
Sally died of ovarian cancer two years ago.
Kate weeps as she says: “She was an amazing lady. We miss her terribly. She was very much the centre of the family.”
Kate says it is hard not to be able to share her findings with her mum. She says: “When Mum died, it was like the North Star just dropped out of the sky.
“Mum would absolutely have come with me on the journey; she loved travelling when I was in a position to send her and Dad to nice places.”
But she says she is glad she did not find any “posh” people in her history – telling Radio Times magazine: “I’d have been upset and disgusted.”
Who Do You Think You Are? showson BBC1 on Monday at 9pm
