upbringing

Murphy’s extravagant abode is a far cry from his very humble upbringing in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he was raised in public housing by his telephone operator mother, Lillian Laney, and police officer dad, Charles Murphy.

“He’s from a beautiful, sunny place in America, and I think he had a nice upbringing,” said Miles D’Alessandro, a college friend.

Though he bridled against the genteel expectations of his upbringing, he was popular and effortlessly debonair.

"In retrospect, I can see that being Scottish and having the working class upbringing I had was a big bonus for me in many ways," says Caton-Jones.

At the same time, I found it hard to reconcile the idea that parents rationally invest in their children’s futures with my own upbringing.