Demi Moore’s most harrowing confessions from teenage rape to mum’s suicide attempt
Demi Moore is celebrating her 58th birthday today – here’s a look at her most outrageous admissions from her traumatic memoir Inside Out as the actress turns another year older
Demi Moore has enjoyed a glittering career in Hollywood for four decades, but her life behind all the money and fame has been far from easy.
Last year, Demi released a memoir called Inside Out, in which she detailed some of the most harrowing things she’s gone through.
The book spans from her difficult upbringing to her high-flying Hollywood career, including when she was raped as a teenager and her mother’s mental health struggles.
She also opens up about her three failed marriages to Freddy Moore, Bruce Willis and Ashton Kutcher.
Here we take a look at Demi’s life as she turns this week.
Raped at 15
In her memoir, the Charlie’s Angels star bravely opened up about the shocking ordeal she suffered as a teenager, alleging the man who raped her at 15 paid her mum afterwards.
The actress claims her mother Virginia King started taking her out to bars to get attention from men when she was very young.
She wrote about coming into contact with the man, who was in his 40s or 50s, while she was at school and claimed he began showing up when she was there.
Demi explained how she returned home from school one day and he was in their house.
He raped her before handing her mum £400 ($500), she said.
Afterwards the man asked her: “How does it feel to be wh***d by your mother for $500?”
Speaking for the first time about the terrifying sexual assault in her memoir, Demi shared: “For decades, I didn’t even think of it as rape. I thought of it as something I caused, something I felt obligated to do because this man expected it from me — I had let him expect it from me… I was an easy mark for a predator.”
The devastating experience left her with issues including addiction, anxiety, eating disorders, insomnia and PTSD.
Demi later explained that her mum asked the man who allegedly raped her to help them move into a new place.
The troubled teen said she felt as if “there was nowhere safe to go.”
Mum’s suicide attempt
During her troubled childhood, Demi says she witnessed her mum Virginia’s multiple suicide attempts at a young age.
The actress claims she was forced to “dig the pills out of her mother’s mouth” as she tried to swallow them, while her dad held it open and told her what to do.
During middle school, Demi began smoking, drinking and clubbing and she started dating a 28-year-old man who she eventually moved in with aged 16.
Her dad tragically died a year later by suicide, which left Demi alone with her troubled mum.
They shared a complicated relationship and stopped talking for eight years when her mum sold stories about her family to the tabloids.
Their relationship slowly began to heal before her mum died in 1998 aged 54.
Demi wrote: “She had so much more in her than she was able to live out in her 54 years.”
Cheating on her husband
Demi was married to Freddy Moore shortly after her dad died.
The Hollywood star wrote about getting married and being unfaithful to Freddy, which she partly blames on the grieving of her dad.
“My dad died in October. I turned eighteen in November. I got married to Freddy the following February,” she wrote. “It was obviously a confusing and fraught time, and our wedding reflected the scattershot nature of the decision.”
She was unfaithful to Freddy twice – the first time as she couldn’t face the fact she was about to get married to distract herself from her dad’s death.
The second time was during filming for a movie in Brazil, as Demi wanted to “feel free”.
She told Freddy about her infidelities and he swiftly moved on with a 14-year-old student – despite being more than twice her age.
Demi says “they are still a couple to this day” in her memoir.
Rocky second marriage
When she was first introduced to Bruce Willis, Demi wasn’t too fond of him.
They met at a premiere, and Demi thought he was “dismissive” when she first laid eyes upon him.
Bruce had been awarded an Emmy, twice, for comedy-drama series Moonlighting – but Demi wrote that she didn’t watch television and had never heard of the show.
Trying to think of something they both had in common, she wrote: “We both had deals with TriStar Pictures, so I said, ‘I hear you have the good office at TriStar.’ He replied with something short, like, ‘I’m never there.’ My impression was, he’s kind of a jerk.”
Despite her initial thoughts, Bruce proved to show his true colours and eventually wooed Demi over.
She said he treated her “like a princess” and they’d often go on drives to see her family.
They embarked on a fairytale romance and went on to get married in Las Vegas before having three kids together.
They split for good as Demi’s mother was dying and handled it well amid their break-up being leaked to the public.
The couple now consider each other as family and spend a lot of time together.
Demi shared: “Bruce is back in my life now, too, a valued friend and cherished family member. My daughters have two new little sisters — Mabel and Evelyn, Emma and Bruce’s kids — and so our family continued to grow. I’m so grateful we all have one another.”
Husband number three
She famously married actor Ashton Kutcher in 2005.
Demi credits their 15-year age difference to helping her feel “young” while she was dating him, and says they were “totally in sync”.
She revealed: “I could just go back in time and experience what it was like to be young, with him- much more so than I’d ever been able to experience it when I was actually in my twenties.”
“I felt completely safe with Ashton,” the mum-of-three added.
But the relationship started getting out of hand as Demi started drinking again after nearly 20 years of sobriety.
She claims she wanted to become “a fun, normal girl”.
The pair got engaged six weeks after she found out she was pregnant.
But tragically the pregnancy ended in miscarriage, which left her “decimated” and the couple turned to IVF – which was unsuccessful.
Demi experienced threesomes in their relationship in order to prove “how fun I could be” until Ashton allegedly cheated.
She wrote: “He admitted it right away,” about the second time he is said to have cheated.
That Vanity Fair cover
The actress says her infamous cover shoot with Vanity Fair helped fight her body issues and eating disorders.
She says she spent most of her life battling with “serious” eating disorders and body image issues.
Demi confessed she could “barely look in the mirror” and would often fear over what directors would think of her appearance.
She posed naked for the front cover of the magazine when she was pregnant back in 1991 to try and face the issues with her body confidence “head-on”.
Some fans slammed the cover as “pornography” and accused Demi of “exhibitionism”.
However she wanted to show “that a pregnant woman could be beautiful and glamorous,” and fortunately some people did find her shoot iconic.
She wrote: “To help women love themselves and their natural shapes — that’s a remarkable and gratifying thing to have accomplished, particularly for someone like me who spent years doing battle with her body.”
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