Cheryl

HE stands to inherit his late dad Liam Payne’s £21million fortune, but nine-year-old Bear might not see a penny until he is at least 25.

His mum Cheryl Tweedy wants the legacy to be withheld until the lad is old enough to make informed financial decisions.

She has gone all out to protect their son since he was born in 2017, shielding him from the public eye in a bid to give him as normal a childhood as possible.

And she is keen not to expose him to the pressures of having such huge wealth at his young age.

One Direction star Liam died suddenly in October 2024 without leaving a will, and Cheryl quickly doubled down on her determination to protect her son from the trappings of fame and fortune.

High Court probate documents published over the weekend confirmed Bear is the sole beneficiary of his father’s fortune.

Parts of the estate — which includes the five-bedroom home at Chalfont St Giles, Bucks, that Liam bought for £3.25million in 2021 to be closer to his son following his split from Cheryl — can be used immediately to look after Bear’s needs.

However, Cheryl, who was named an administrator of Liam’s assets last year, would prefer he does not gain full access until he is much older.

“Protecting Bear is Cheryl’s priority in life,” a friend explained. “She is a devoted mother and will do everything she can to take care of him.

“Cheryl knows how difficult it can be to live in the public eye and has shielded Bear from that as much as she can.

“Inheriting this amount of money at a young age is enough to have the potential to send anyone sidewards — and that is what she wants to protect Bear from.

“She is going to stop him receiving Liam’s inheritance until he is at least 25 years old, if not older.

“For Cheryl, she feels that she wants Bear to be of an age where he can make informed decisions about the money.”

Cheryl and Liam first met when he auditioned for The X Factor in 2008 and she was on the judging panel.

It was not until 2016 that they started dating, and Bear was born the following year.

Their relationship ended in 2018, with Cheryl and Liam becoming devoted co-parents to their young son.

In a statement following their break-up, Liam wrote online: “We still have so much love for each other as a family.

“Bear is our world and we ask that you respect his privacy as we navigate our way through this together.”

In the years that followed, Liam regularly praised Cheryl’s ability as a mother and revealed she had stayed at home with their son while he pursued his solo music career.

He said of the former Girls Aloud star: “What I’ve learnt about being a dad is how hard it is to be a mum and she hasn’t had any help from anybody and she’s done it all herself.

“She supported me going off and doing my career and stuff. She is amazing.”

Cheryl, too, spoke fondly of Liam and revealed becoming a mother had changed the way she wanted to live her life. She said in 2019: “Everything changed for me from the moment Bear was born.

“My old brain came out of my head, and all my worries, anxieties and feelings of emptiness went, and a new brain replaced it.

“I knew the word ‘fulfilled’, but I’d never known what that felt like.

“Money, fame, success should have made me feel that, but they never did, which is probably why I looked for it in my relationships with men, but that never worked either.

“I was always angry at myself.

“And then, even though I’d had a really tough pregnancy because I had gestational diabetes, I felt more peaceful. The moment I held him in my arms I had that feeling: Fulfilment. It’s stayed with me. And I’ve changed so much. I really have.”

Together, Cheryl and Liam chose to keep their son out of the spotlight and, to date, the schoolboy is rarely seen.

Last month, Cheryl revealed she had taken him on a dream holiday to Orlando, Florida, but chose not to post in real time about their trip on social media.

She also continued to keep his face shielded from view, a decision she made with Liam when Bear was still a small child.

A friend explained: “Giving her son a normal and happy childhood is what Cheryl remains focused on.

“She wants him to have a life that other kids have. His parents might have been public figures, but Bear is not. Keeping that normality and stability for her son is paramount for Cheryl.

“It’s why the idea of him inheriting such a vast amount of money is worrying. Not everyone in this world has good intentions and Cheryl knows that.

“She wants him to still have ambition and the drive to succeed without the back-up of the money — and she’s aware that people may want to befriend him because they are aware of his situation.

“Guiding her son and controlling his access to the money will allow her to keep him safe. The older he is, the more wise he will be and, ultimately, when he is a man in his twenties with a job and a life of his own, he will be better able to make informed decisions with her guidance.

“It is all any mother would want for their child.”

Liam’s passing at the age of 31, friends say, only fuelled Cheryl’s determination to allow their son to live a normal life.

The singer fell to his death from a third-floor hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in October 2024.

An autopsy confirmed he died from multiple traumas and internal and external bleeding.

He had been with his girlfriend Kate Cassidy in the days leading up to the tragedy. She left the country to return to the house they shared in the US days before Liam died. Two men were arrested on suspicion of supplying him with cocaine before his death.

Liam’s body was repatriated to the UK for his funeral in Amersham, Bucks, which was attended by his closest friends and family.

Cheryl was supported by her former Girls Aloud bandmates Nicola Roberts and Kimberley Walsh, as well as Liam’s friend and former mentor Simon Cowell.

Liam’s One Direction bandmate and close friend Niall Horan spent time with him in Argentina prior to his death after Liam flew there to watch him perform.

Three weeks ago, he spoke movingly about Liam and said he will cherish their last meeting. Niall revealed: “I’m glad of that, it means my last memory of him was happy. It still feels surreal.

“On day one I was, like, ‘Nah, it didn’t happen’. Our friendship was a bond that was there for ever, even if we hadn’t seen each other for a while.

“And it’s wild that one day, like the flick of a switch, he’s gone.

“All our families are in touch, they shared those experiences, too.”

Recalling the good times he shared with Liam, Niall added: “When I think of Liam’s passing, there is sadness, but it also makes me laugh because of the memories we had.

“I’ll go to places and think of something random that makes me laugh.”

Niall joined One Direction stars Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik at the funeral.

In the days before the service, Cheryl issued a statement about Liam, saying: “As I try to navigate this earth-shattering event, and work through my own grief at this indescribably painful time, I’d like to kindly remind everyone that we have lost a human being.

“Liam was not only a pop star and celebrity, he was a son, a brother, an uncle, a dear friend and a father to our son.

“A son that now has to face the reality of never seeing his father again.”

She added: “Before you leave comments or make videos, ask yourself if you would like your own child or family to read them.

“Please give Liam the little dignity he has left in the wake of his death to rest in some peace at last.”

Since then, friends say Cheryl has devoted her time to caring for Bear and is determined to give him stability.

“Cheryl loves being a mum and doing all the normal things that parents do,” a pal explained.

“The school drop-off and pick-up, play dates with friends, cooking the dinners — she does it all while juggling work commitments.

“Cheryl knows there will be interest around Bear because of who his parents are. But that doesn’t mean he has to live that life — or even have any part in it. Protecting him from that and caring for him is all she cares about.

“She is a mother first and foremost. Her son will always be her number one priority.”

Brian Lindstrom, a filmmaker whose documentaries shined a light on society’s underdogs and inspired social change, has died. He was 65.

Lindstrom’s wife, author Cheryl Strayed, confirmed the news on Instagram Friday.

“Brian Lindstrom died this morning the way he lived — with gentleness and courage, grace and gratitude for his beautiful life,” she wrote. “Our children, Carver and Bobbi, and I held him as he took his last breath and we will hold him forever in our hearts. The only thing more immense than our sorrow that Progressive Supranuclear Palsy took our beloved Brian from us is the endless love we have for him.”

According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, PSP is caused by damage to nerve cells in areas of the brain that control thinking and body movements. The rare neurological disease progresses rapidly.

Strayed, who penned the bestselling memoir “Wild,” which was later adapted for the big screen and starred Reese Witherspoon, announced just weeks ago that Lindstrom had been diagnosed “with a serious, fatal illness.”

Lindstrom was born Feb. 12, 1961. The son of a bartender and a liquor salesman, he was raised in Portland, Ore. — which he and his family still called home.

He was the first member of his family to attend college, which he paid for by taking out student loans, landing work-study jobs and working summers in a salmon cannery in Cordova, Alaska. During a 2013 TEDx Talk, Lindstrom said that after he’d exhausted all the video production classes at Portland’s Lewis & Clark College, his professor Stuart Kaplan gave him a gift certificate to a class at the Northwest Film Center. There, Lindstrom made a short film about his grandpa that landed him a spot in the MFA program at Columbia University.

It was a train trip with his grandpa that inspired Lindstrom to tackle challenging topics with a lens that restored dignity to his subjects. His grandpa was a binge-drinker, and on day three of the trip, he woke up with a hangover and was missing his dentures. Lindstrom, only 5 at the time, noticed the way other passengers treated him and his grandpa differently.

“I think what my films are about is that search for my grandfather’s dentures, the humanizing narrative that bridges the gap between us and them and arrives at we,” he said.

Lindstrom said he returned to Portland after film school and “did several projects with the Northwest Film Center that had me putting a camera in the hands of kids on probation, homeless teens, newly recovering addicts, hard-hit people who had hard-hitting stories to share.”

“Those projects taught me so much about the transformative power of art, and they gave me permission I felt in my personal films to ask people if I might follow them, so that an audience could better understand what they were going through, and by extension, better understand themselves,” he said.

Lindstrom’s 2007 award-winning cinéma-vérité-style film, “Finding Normal,” followed long-term drug addicts as they left prison or detox and tried to rebuild their lives with the help of a recovery mentor.

“What I’m most proud about is that ‘Finding Normal’ is the only film to ever be shown to inmates in solitary confinement at Oregon State Penitentiary, and not, I might add, as a punishment,” Lindstrom said.

In 2013, he released “Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse,” a documentary that illuminated the life of a man who grappled with schizophrenia and examined his death, which happened in police custody. Discussing the film with LA Progressive in 2018, Lindstrom said that he doesn’t make films for audiences.

“I make them for the people in the film. It is my small way of honoring them,” he told the outlet. “That doesn’t mean I don’t delve into dark areas or that I ignore that person’s struggles. I’m much more concerned with trying to achieve an honest depiction of that person’s life than I am with any potential audience reaction.”

Lindstrom’s work aimed to inspire empathy and humanize those suffering in the margins of society, but it also catalyzed policy change. His acclaimed 2015 documentary, “Mothering Inside,” followed participants in the Family Preservation Project (FPP), an initiative helping incarnated moms establish and maintain bonds with their children.

Midway through filming the documentary, the Oregon Department of Corrections announced it planned to nix funding for the FPP. Lindstrom hosted early screenings of the film, which inspired grassroots advocacy that reached then-Gov. Kate Brown, who subsequently signed legislation that restored funding. The film’s release also helped make Oregon the first state in the U.S. to pass a bill of rights for children of incarcerated parents.

Partnering with Strayed, Lindstrom made the documentary short, “I Am Not Untouchable. I Just Have My Period,” for the New York Times in 2019. The film highlighted the experience of teen girls in Surkhet, Nepal, and the menstrual stigma they faced. Most recently, the filmmaker released, “Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill,” which examined the folk-rock singer’s life from her traumatic childhood and drug-addled adolescence through her rise in the Laurel Canyon music scene and untimely death.

Lindstrom, discussing “Judee Sill” and his style as a filmmaker, told Oregon ArtsWatch, “It’s the chance to kind of focus on the question: What does it mean to be human? The person that the film is about, what can they teach us, what can we learn from them? What can they learn from themselves?”

In 2017, Lindstrom received the Civil Liberties Award from the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon for his work advancing civil rights and liberties. That same year, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Lewis & Clark College.

In Strayed’s post announcing Lindstrom’s death, she described their more than 30-year partnership as a stroke of “tremendous luck.”

“We loved each other and our kids with deep devotion and true delight. He was a stellar husband. He was the most magnificent dad. He was a man whose every word and deed was driven by kindness, compassion, and generosity,” she wrote. “He saw the goodness in everyone. He believed that we are all sacred and redeemable.

“His work as a documentary filmmaker was dedicated to telling stories of people who, as he put it, ‘society puts an X through.’ He erased that X with his camera and his astonishing heart.”

Strayed’s memoir — which followed her as she hiked 1,100 miles along the Pacific Crest Trail in the wake of her mother’s death, a battle with drug addiction and divorce from her first husband — concludes with a happy ending. She finished the months-long hike and sat on a white bench near the Bridge of the Gods, a stone’s throw from the spot where, she writes, she’d marry Lindstrom four years later.

“His greatest legacy is Carver and Bobbi, who embody everything good and true about their father. Their extraordinary grace, courage, and fortitude during this harrowing time was unfaltering and grounded in the undying love Brian poured into them every day of their lives,” she wrote. “We do not know how we will live without him. We’re utterly bereft. We can only walk this dark path and search for the beauty Brian knew was there. It will be his eternal light that guides us.”