'Inside Out': Demi Moore talks childhood, rape, marriages in memoir
Hollywood actor Demi Moore has made startling revelations about her life in her new memoir called Inside Out. In the book, the 56-year-old actor discloses many previously unknown details including growing up with abusive parents, a rape at age 15, her marriages to Bruce Willis and Ashton Kutcher, and how, even in her 50s, after Kutcher's affairs came to the fore, she felt unloveable.
Moore talks about feeling unsafe as a child, with both her parents being abusive alcoholics. She recalls stumbling upon the fact that her father, Dan Guynes, wasn't her biological dad. Guynes eventually abandoned Moore and her mother, Virginia, to fend for themselves. Moore also talked about her mother's suicide attempts, revealing how as a 12-year-old, she dug pills out of her mother's mouth.
According to ABC's Good Morning America, a teenaged Moore was then responsible for her "unstable" mother. At 15, she returned home one day to find a man known to her mother inside her home. She writes in the book, "It was rape and a devastating betrayal, revealed by the man's cruel question, 'How does it feel to be whored by your mother for $500?'"
Looking back at the rape now, Moore told GMA that deep down she doesn't think that her mother sold her. The actor said, "I don't think it was a straightforward transaction. But she still did give him the access, and put me in harm's way."
Further, at age 16, Moore left her home and quit school. Without any formal training, she decided to become an actor. After a few modeling jobs and featuring in music videos for her first husband, musician Freddy Moore, she made her debut with Silvio Narizzano's 1981 teen drama Choices. In the mid-80s, her career picked up and by mid-90s, she was the highest-paid actress.
Moore's first marriage ended in 1985 and two years later, she married Hollywood star Bruce Willis. The couple had three daughters and divorced amicably in 2000. After the divorce, Moore took a three-year hiatus at the peak of her career to take care of her kids. She returned to Hollywood as a villain in the 2003 action comedy Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.
Shortly after Charlie's Angels, a 40-year-old Moore started dating Ashton Kutcher, then 25. Moore said Kutcher accepted her "baggage" and the two were married in 2005. Even though ex-husband Willis married model Emma Heming Willis (23 years his junior) in 2009, Moore's relationship with Kutcher swept tabloid headlines. She told GMA that this discrimination stems from a woman's value being tied to her fertility.
Moore also talked about her miscarriages and how despite getting in-vitro, she was unable to conceive with Kutcher. She told GMA that she got so consumed by her desperate attempts to conceive that she lost sight of her existing family.
However, Moore said she valued herself less in the marriage with Kutcher. "I put him first," she wrote. "So when he expressed his fantasy of bringing a third person into our bed, I didn't say no. I wanted to show him how great and fun I could be." Moore later learned of Kutcher's affairs by a Google alert. Upon confrontation, he admitted to cheating.
After her marriage to Kutcher failed, Moore recalled feeling "unloveable." To cope with that pain, she ended her 20-year sobriety and starting abusing substances like Vicodin and alcohol. Eventually, her three daughters and her friend Bruce Willis stopped talking to her. In 2012, Moore was rushed to a hospital after smoking synthetic marijuana and inhaling nitrous oxide at a party. She weighed 102 lbs.
Now, having picked herself back up, Moore has repaired much of what was lost. Her eldest daughter, Rumer Willis, reacted to the memoir saying that she felt privileged to "see all sides of my mom." She told the Wall Street Journal, "It made so much sense, to see her whole childhood detailed. It was like having a bunch of puzzle pieces put together."
