Humble mum Melissa: 'WHAT MY KIDS TEACH ME'

Hollywood's funnylady reveals some of her hilarious parenting bloopers

When she landed the role of evil Ursula in the new version of The Little Mermaid, Melissa McCarthy couldn’t wait to make use of every ounce of awfulness she could muster.

“She’s kind of delicious to play,” muses the actress of the villainous sea witch. “You can’t go too far with her.”

But while she’s thrilled to portray such a conniving character on screen, away from the public eye, she’s more anxious mother than malevolent monster.

Melissa, 52, and her comedian husband Ben Falcone, 49, are protective parents of their daughters, Vivian, 16, and Georgette, 13 – but Melissa says she sometimes gets things wrong, like the day she decided to talk to her eldest about the birds and the bees.

“I was taught a lot about Mary and the immaculate conception,” laughs the Nine Perfect Strangers star, who attended convent school as a teenager. So, when she became a parent herself, the plan had been to broach the subject of sex nice and early.

Unfortunately, it turned out she was “still a former Catholic person” whose natural instinct was, “Talk about sex and a lightning bolt comes down!” Instead of tackling it early, she ended up waiting until the topic was about to be covered at Vivian’s school.

Melissa wanted to get in first, so she found herself raising the subject while she and Vivian were picking up their dog’s poop in their back garden.