Is Felicity Huffman Hollywood's WORST mother? The Varsity Blues convict has cruelly reminded the world of her daughter's humiliation - and, says KARA KENNEDY, it's all a shameless bid to revive her long-dead acting career

Talk about a desperate housewife!

Felicity Huffman, apparently tired of sitting at home and nursing her long-dead acting career, has put on her best I'm Sorry face and tried for a relaunch.

Here was Huffman, of Varsity Blues Scandal fame and former Hollywood C-lister, donning the cloak of 'white guilt' as she broke her four-year silence on the college bribery debacle, describing to ABC the moment of her arrest in 2019: '[The FBI] came into my home, they woke my daughters up at gunpoint - again, nothing new to the black and brown community - then they put my hands behind my back and handcuffed me.'

Reader, don't be fooled by the perfectly sculpted blow-dry, the freshly bleached hair, Felicity suffered during her 11-day imprisonment – and she wants us to know about it.

'I asked [the investigators] if I could get dressed. I thought it was a hoax,' she says as her no-makeup makeup glistens under the TV studio lights. 'I literally turned to one of the FBI people in a flak jacket and a gun and I go 'is this a joke?'

As to why on Earth she felt compelled to pay fraudster Rick Singer $15,000 in 2017 to fudge her daughter Sophia's SAT score and bolster her chances of admittance to America's top universities – well, the answer is simple:

'It felt like I had to give my daughter a chance at a future,' she explained to achingly sympathetic interviewer Marc Brown. 'And so it was sort of like my daughter's future, which meant I had to break the law.'

You see, Huffman – a millionaire multiple times over – felt trapped. She was simply unable to give her daughter the opportunities open to other Americans without a criminal intervention. Don't you feel pity?

She felt unable, even, to get her daughter a place to study acting, despite both Hoffman and her husband being… world-famous actors.

Top-of-the-range private tuition? That wouldn't cut it. Leaning on any number of your Hollywood contacts to help get Sophia a head start like every other shameless star? That's nepotism! Syphoning off a few million to support your daughter in another pursuit if university simply wasn't her thing? Hell no!

But as the prosecution argued in court: '[Huffman's] efforts weren't driven by need or desperation, but by a sense of entitlement, or at least moral cluelessness, facilitated by wealth and insularity. Millions of parents send their kids to college every year. All of them care as much as she does about their children's fortunes. But they don't buy fake SAT scores.'

I can't help but think of the real victim in all this – poor Sophia.

This young woman – now 23, but then a teenager – knew literally nothing of Huffman's grade tampering until it emerged in the global press. Nor did she realize that her mother thought her to be so supremely incapable that she didn't stand a chance.

In fact, it was worse than that. For, as we learned at trial, Huffman's deceit involved using Sophia's learning disability to gain extra exam time and have her transferred to a different test center – one controlled by Singer.

No matter that the whole sorry saga likely caused the young girl terrible pain, Huffmann doubles down: 'It felt like I would be a bad mother if I didn't do it.' (I'm sure your daughter begs to differ!)

And no matter that now – after starting the process of rebuilding her life, retaking the SAT and gaining a place at the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University to study drama – Sophia must once again be embarrassed before the world.

I did it because I believed my daughter was hopeless, mom-of-the-century Felicity protests to ABC.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall as the Huffman clan gather around the Christmas table this year.

So, is this really just a cynical bid for reputational repair?

No, says Huffman: 'I want to use my experience and what I've gone through and the pain to bring something good.'

She was joined on ABC by Susan Burton, founder of A New Way of Life – a non-profit that helps formerly incarcerated women get back on their feet after prison.

A noble cause, indeed. But by swathing herself in Burton's good deeds, is Huffman trying to suggest that she was the victim in all this, cruelly imprisoned but now freed and repairing her life while heroically supporting others like her?

Let's hope not – because that would be a scandal so sickeningly fraudulent and dripping in deceit it would top even the Varsity Blues fiasco.