Cecelia Ahern has revealed the unusual hobby she took up during lockdown after picking up an interest from her children.
The award winning Irish novelist, 40, appeared on the RTE Late Late Show for a chat on Friday night to speak about her TV adaptation of her book Roar, starring Nicole Kidman.
Speaking to host Ryan Tubridy, Cecelia said she became obsessed with playing with Lego over lockdown after playing it with her children and found it was like therapy.
"I love Lego!" she said. "I think it is only since my kids started playing Lego, then I kind of took over.
"I'd begin it with them. And they would have long left the table and I would still be like working it out.
“But lockdown, you know some people baked bread, but my thing was to make this massive Hogwarts Lego. That was my one big project.
"I loved it and it's like such good therapy. I think I did about an hour every evening for a few weeks. I love things were my mind can just flow."
However, despite her keen interest she said she was too embarrassed to buy Lego sets for herself in the shop as she feels like a 'loser'.
"Usually they're gifts because I feel like too much of a loser buying it myself. But I am proud, I want the gift!
"I was in Smyths the other day and I was looking at this massive Millennium Falcon [Lego set], that would take me a good year [to complete]."
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The PS. I Love You author is mother to three children, Robin, 12, Sonny, 9, and Blossom, 2, who was born just before the Covid pandemic.
She described herself as a "very weird person" on the show as she joked about being an introvert-extrovert but explained how it helped her with her writing.
"I am a very weird person," she said. "Like, I love to be with people I am a sociable person, I am not like locked in my house all the time…It’s as well as being an empathetic person that you can take all the stuff of other people…and just feel absolutely exhausted.
"I love to be with other people but then I need to be alone to just recharge."
The Dublin continued, saying: "I am a highly sensitive, empathetic person then when somebody is telling me about something or when I am with someone, I can feel what they are feeling and it’s not magic it’s just lots of people are like that, and I feel like I kind of have the emotion then that they are expressing.
"You know like, I can feel like I can feel it which helps my writing and observation obviously is a really huge part of that as well just watching people and kind of feeling what they are feeling."
Cecelia also spoke about the TV adaptation of her short story collection called Roar, which she called a "Career highlight".
It is produced by and stars Australian actress Nicole Kidman and is now available to watch on Apple TV.
Roar has been described as a “fiercely feminist story collection” that shows how women navigate the world.
Speaking on the Late Late Show, Cecelia said: "It took a while, but we got there, and I am really, really proud of it. It’s a career highlight."
