The American Sniper star was sent away to a residential educational facility when she was just eight years old, and she believes living away from her parents made her a lot more independent.

However, she has no plans to give her three-year-old daughter Marlowe the same upbringing.

"I don't think I could (send Marlowe to boarding school)," she tells News.com.au. "I was eight years old when I went to boarding school. For me, looking back, that was too young. It was really hard but you adapt. I feel that I have a really deep understanding of every different type of woman and I have close female friends because we raised each other to a certain degree and went through every formative change together.

"I definitely found a kind of resilience and a lot of strength from that. It isn't that I have cruel parents, it was culturally what a lot of people do. But I want my baby with me."

Sienna split from Marlowe's father, actor Tom Sturridge, in June (15) and she has been adapting to life as a single mother, and the 33 year old admits her daughter brings her a lot of joy.

"It's an incredible bond. It's taught me to understand aspects of myself, the negative and the positive," she explains. "It's opened up this door to a whole level of analysis, not selfishly, but about the world and my own experience in it. You become on every level more conscious. For me, that's a positive thing...

"She's this magical little creature and as connected to her as I feel, it's so abstract for me to understand that I made that. Some people look at their kids and they see themselves. I just sit there in wonder. I can't quite connect the dots as to how that happened...

"I find it really wonderfully baffling."