That's My Girl! Michael's Talented Mini-me

The Shorty dad’s pride and joy is a young star on the rise.

- Sebastian Van Der Zwan

When Michael Galvin thinks back to his first-ever photo shoot with his daughter Lily almost exactly 11 years ago, he grimaces.

“She was crying nearly the entire time and we felt terrible because she was so miserable,” the Shortland Street star remembers, explaining that the poor wee girl had suffered from severe reflux.

“There was a span of one and a half minutes when she wasn’t screaming, and we managed to squeeze all the photos into that space. Sorry about that, Lily! But she’s been very good today, hasn’t she?”

Indeed, fast-forward just over a decade to our new Woman’s Day shoot and not only is Lily a heck of a lot taller, but she’s also full of smiles, a ray of sunshine on a chilly Auckland winter’s day – and not just because we’ve surprised her with red velvet cupcakes to mark her 12th birthday, which she celebrated a couple of days earlier.

Shorty stalwart Michael – who has played Dr Chris Warner ever since the iconic TVNZ 2 drama began in 1992 – can’t quite believe his little girl is going to be a teenager next year.

“I’ve been looking at a few old photos and feeling a bit wistful,” he confesses. “That playground we saw earlier, we spent a lot of time climbing all over it when Lily was young, but today we walked right past it and it won’t be long before she’s completely outgrown it. Fortunately, she doesn’t hate me yet. When are you going to start hating me, Lily?”

Laughing, his daughter insists she still loves playgrounds, adding, “And I’ll never hate Dad!”