Featured Image Credit: (Monica Schipper/Getty Images)
Topics: Celebrity, Entertainment, Parenting, TV and Film, Celebrity News, Mental Health
Brenna Cooper
Topics: Celebrity, Entertainment, Parenting, TV and Film, Celebrity News, Mental Health
Warning: This article contains discussion of suicide which some readers may find distressing.
Demi Moore revealed her heartbreaking reaction to learning the man she grew up believing to be her dad wasn't actually her biological father.
With a career spanning four and a half decades, Moore is certainly an easily recognisable face in Hollywood. However, her life hasn't all been glitz and glamour.
The 62-year-old was born Demi Gene Guynes in Roswell, New Mexico to an 19-year-old mother, Virginia King, and for years, she believed her father to be a man named Dan Guynes. But a childhood revelation would leave The Substance star shattered, as the man she thought was her dad was not, in fact, her biological father.
Advert
Moore's parent was actually a man named Charles Foster Harmon Sr, who abandoned her mother prior to the actor's birth.
Her mother later married Guynes, and he raised Moore alongside her half brother. Guynes later died by suicide in 1980, shortly after his second divorce from the actor's mother.
While Moore's parentage hasn't been a secret throughout her career, she declared in 1991 that she didn't have a relationship with the man who would be considered her 'biological father'.
Writing about her reaction to finding out that Guynes wasn't actually her father in her memoir Inside Out, Moore revealed that she felt 'that I wasn't wanted, or that I don't deserve to be here'.
Advert
The revelation about her parents wasn't the only heartbreaking moment revealed in the book. The Ghost star also detailed her mother's struggles with alcoholism, and how she witnessed her attempt to take her own life several times.
"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," Moore wrote, describing one incident, before adding that it was the moment she felt her childhood ended.
Moore later left home at the age of 16 in order to pursue a career in acting and modelling. However, she's admitted she struggled in personal life, ultimately becoming addicted to alcohol and drugs.
She ultimately checked into rehab ahead of starring in 1985's St Elmo's Fire at the insistence of director Joel Schumacher, a move which she later called 'divine intervention'.
Advert
"To this day, I see this as some version of divine intervention," she previously told The Independent.
"If I’d had to give up the movie and go through the programme to get sober for myself, I doubt I would have done it. I just didn’t value myself enough for that."
If you’ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence, please don’t suffer alone. Call Samaritans for free on their anonymous 24-hour phone line on 116 123 or contact Harmless by visiting their website https://harmless.org.uk.