The 56-year-old actress discusses her childhood, marriages and career.
Demi Moore is telling all.
In her new memoir, Inside Out, the 56-year-old actress opens up about her tumultuous life, from growing up in less-than-ideal circumstances, to experiencing sexual assault, having three marriages, a miscarriage, and countless moments in between.
Keep reading for the biggest revelations from Inside Out, which is available now.
She was raped at 15 and had a complicated relationship with her mom
Demi says she came into contact with a man who was in his 40s or 50s when she was a teenager and he began showing up to her school. One day, though, he was in her apartment when she got home.
"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," she writes of the experience which left her with issues including addiction, anxiety, eating disorders, insomnia and PTSD.
Shortly after the alleged incident, Demi says her mother, Ginny, had the man help them move into a new place, which left the teen feeling as if "there was nowhere safe to go." During the move, the man, Demi writes, turned to her and said, 'How does it feel to be whored by your mother for five hundred dollars?'"
"Though [the man] may have given Ginny money with no clear discussion of what he would get in return, it’s also entirely possible Ginny knew exactly what he wanted, and it’s possible she agreed he could have it," she writes.
The incident was just one in a string of upsetting events that plagued her childhood, including her mother's multiple suicide attempts, which Demi says she witnessed at a young age.
"I remember using my fingers, the small fingers of a child, to dig the pills my mother had tried to swallow out of her mouth while my father held it open and told me what to do," she writes of the first attempt.
Demi says she began smoking, drinking and clubbing in middle school, before leaving school and moving in with her 28-year-old boyfriend at age 16. Her father died by suicide a year later, while her issues with her mom, who had been a teen when she gave birth to Demi, plagued her life.
According to Demi, their relationship had their ups and downs, with her mom posing for nude images, causing scenes during every visit, but also bonding with her grandchildren. The eight-year break in their relationship came after Ginny sold images of and stories about her family to the tabloids, something Demi said was a "particular brand of lunacy." Demi's wounded relationship, though, "began to heal" when she decided to care for her dying mother.
"She had so much more in her than she was able to live out in her 54 years," Demi writes.
She was unfaithful in her first marriage
Shortly after her father's death, Demi says she made some major life changes, including a marriage to Freddy Moore.
"My dad died in October. I turned eighteen in November. I got married to Freddy the following February," she writes. "It was obviously a confusing and fraught time, and our wedding reflected the scattershot nature of the decision."
She admits to being unfaithful to Freddy more than once, at first because she "couldn’t face the fact that I was getting married to distract myself from grieving the death of my father… I couldn’t get out of the marriage, but I could sabotage it," and later to "feel free" while filming a movie in Brazil.
Demi says she told Freddy about her infidelity and claims he quickly moved on with a 14-year-old student that he'd given guitar lessons to.
"I noticed right away that Freddy and Renee had a connection -- despite his being more than twice her age -- and one afternoon I told them, ‘If anything ever happened to Freddy and me, I bet you two would get together,’" Demi writes. "Renee was embarrassed, and he was furious with me for upsetting her at the time, but as soon as Freddy and I broke up, they got together, and they’re still a couple to this day."
She credits St. Elmo's Fire with saving her life
Demi, who says she previously quit drinking "cold turkey" after bad experiences while filming General Hospital, writes that she continued to do cocaine amid her marriage to Freddy and picked up alcohol again shortly after their split. The cocaine, she says, "had escalated into a dependency" as well.
When she landed a role in the 1985 film St. Elmo's Fire, the team in charge of the movie told her that if she went to rehab, she would be allowed to keep her role. "I had something much bigger than me to fight for," she writes. "And so I did."
"I never wanted to experience that moment of waking up and trying to remember what I had done the night before again. I didn't want any more embarrassment. I wanted to be present, not dulled by alcohol or sped up by cocaine, and I dedicated myself fully to the process," she writes. "... St. Elmo's will always be the movie that changed my life. If I hadn't gone to rehab to make that film, I really wonder if I'd still be alive."
She took Jon Cryer's virginity, hooked up with Rob Lowe and got engaged to Emilio Estevez
Following her divorce from Freddy, Demi was feeling "adrift" when she met Jon Cryer on the set of 1984's No Small Affair. During the filming, Demi writes, "Jon fell for me in real life."
"[He] lost his virginity to me while we were making that movie," she claims. "It pains me to think of how callous I was with his feelings -- that I stole what could have been such an important and beautiful moment from him. I was sort of losing it right then, and I was definitely not in a place to take care of someone else’s feelings."
A year later, on the set of St. Elmo's Fire, Moore "vaguely" recalls having "one ill-advised late night together" with Rob Lowe, before meeting her future fiance, Emilio Estevez. Though Demi says they didn't begin dating seriously until she got sober, they got engaged just six months later, largely because Moore saw his family as "a good influence" on her.
According to Demi, their relationship came to an end after accusations of infidelity and missed meet-ups. They did remain friends, with Demi even accompanying him to a movie premiere, which became "a highly consequential night in my life, because at that premiere, I met an actor who was very hot at the time, on a hit series called Moonlighting. His name was Bruce Willis."
She initially thought Bruce Willis was "kind of a jerk"
After being introduced to her future husband at the premiere, she found him "dismissive," before discovering that he was actually "so gallant... and dynamic" and "a real gentleman."
Bruce wooed Demi, going on drives to visit her eccentric family, treating her "like a princess," and connecting over their difficult childhoods. They eventually tied the knot in Las Vegas, before hosting a "lavish and over the top" wedding a few weeks later.
Demi says their fairy-tale romance started imploding after she wanted to return to acting following the birth of their first child, but the couple pushed down their emotions and made it work. During the making of Ghost, though, Demi, through her character, was forced to confront "how to access my emotions, particularly my pain."
Though Bruce "didn't want to be the guy who walked out on his family," he eventually confessed to not wanting to be in the relationship anymore and Demi suspected infidelity. A second pregnancy, though, kept them together and a third child cemented their relationship, until Demi's mother began dying and they decided to call it quits.
Despite their split leaking to the public before they planned, their kids "couldn't really comprehend what it meant" and handled everything well. Now, they consider each other family and frequently spend time together.
"Bruce is back in my life now, too, a valued friend and cherished family member," she writes. "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."
Her Vanity Fair cover helped her confront her body issues and eating disorders
Throughout her entire life, Demi says she suffered from "serious" eating disorders and body image issues. Sometimes she "could barely bring myself to look in a mirror," while other times she fretted over what directors would think of her.
The latter fear ended up being realized when she filmed About Last Night and, according to Demi, the director asked her to lose weight. Despite her sobriety, Demi writes that her "anxieties just shifted over to food," which she used as "kind of a punishment for everything I believed was wrong and dirty about myself."
She calls displaying her body during that time "agony," but continued to take roles that required nudity in order to "confront" her issues "head-on." She was able to her face her concerns on the cover of Vanity Fair in 1991, when she posed nude while pregnant, something that "set off a firestorm" of "overwhelming" reactions.
While some criticized the cover as "pornography" and accused Demi of "exhibitionism," she wanted to show "that a pregnant woman could be beautiful and glamorous," which some people did take away from the iconic shoot.
"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," she writes.
Demi says that body image issues continued to plague her, though, so much so that working out became an "obsession" and a director encouraged her to gain weight. When she did eventually do so, she felt "almost unbearably uncomfortable" in her own skin.
It became an issue again after her third pregnancy when she finally decided enough was enough because she "couldn't go on fighting my body and my weight. I had to make peace... I had finally reached a truce with my body."
Her marriage to Ashton Kutcher was tumultuous to say the least
When the pair first met, despite their 15-year age difference, they were "totally in sync" and, for Demi, "felt like a do over."
"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," Demi explains. "... I felt completely safe with Ashton."
However, Demi says she began drinking again, ending her nearly 20-year run of sobriety, in order to try become "a fun, normal girl."
The pair got engaged six weeks after she found out she was pregnant. The pregnancy, though, ended in miscarriage -- which, she writes, left her "decimated" -- and rounds of IVF were unsuccessful. Threesomes soon entered their relationship -- something Demi writes that she agreed to in order to prove "how fun I could be" -- and infidelity on Ashton's part came next, Demi claims.
"He admitted it right away," Demi writes of the second time Ashton allegedly cheated, after which she weighed just 98 pounds. "... I really thought I might throw up."
Largely due to her marriage to Ashton, Demi says her relationship with her children had suffered, with none of the three daughters she shared with Bruce speaking to her.
"The husband who I'd thought was the love of my life had cheated on me and then decided he didn't want to work on our marriage. My children weren't speaking to me... Their father -- a friend I'd counted on for years -- was gone from my life," she writes. "The career I'd scrambled to create since I moved out of my mother's apartment when I was sixteen years old was stalled, or maybe it was over for good. Everything I was attached to -- even my health -- had abandoned me. I was getting blinding headaches and losing weight scarily fast. I looked like I felt: destroyed."
Despite the ups and downs, Demi says she got help, repaired her relationship with her children, eventually felt "grateful" for her relationship with Ashton and found friendship with Bruce.
"I've had extraordinary luck in this life: both bad and good. Putting it all down in writing makes me realize how crazy a lot of it has been, how improbable," she writes. "But we all suffer, and we all triumph, and we all get to choose how to hold both."
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