shirley maclaine.hildho childhood, "lucky me: my life with and without my mom shirley maclaine." >> shirley maclaine is bigger than life. she is a force to be reckoned with. and she's big in everything she does. she's big in eating an ice cream sundae. >> from war and peace, down to -- >> reporter: now starring in the global sensation "downton abbey," maclean, at one time, was a triple threat. who sang, danced and acted and went on to win an oscar. >> i deserve this. thank you. >> reporter: -- for her portrayal as a mother who has a love/hate relationship with her daughter in "terms of endearment." >> why should i be happy about being a grandmother? >> reporter: but maclean's real life daughter says that despite the glamour, her childhood wasn't a fantasy, but more of a nightmare. your mother was absent -- most of your life. >> yes, she was. she was very absent. i was very lonely. very lonely. and i still struggle with abandonment issues and loneliness. >> reporter: she was always happy to see you for

and is sitting down at the table with shirley maclaine. she's just been to china. could 70's, leftist. she begins to gush about how there were a out of this farm and that this professor. part of the cultural revolution. the scent of the intellectuals of to the countryside. .. didn't quite get the story. they didn't understand what they were seeing. a lot were still whetted to these old images of mall las china. in some cases they were -- i think that's striking. >> host: it's an argument for on-the-ground journalism. it's a smart british diplomat who just went out there and, you know, beat the movement as if he were a journalist and in effect interviewed people and wrote down what he saw. >>>> guest: exactly. roger is still alive. i'm happy to say. an absolutely magnificent test -- book that withstood the test of time. he went out and on the ground, he got the story. he saws things praymatically without an ideological lens. he caught at love things that other observers missed. >> host: that's interesting. ideology can be the enemy of history. >> guest: i think very