Over the years, stars including Jennette McCurdy and Macaulay Culkin have discussed hitting rock bottom with their parents.
The iCarly alum broke down the abuse she faced because of her mother, Debra McCurdy, in her memoir, I Am Glad My Mom Died.
“Of course, there are moments where I fantasize that my mom would’ve apologized or that we’d have a turnaround in our relationship, but that’s fantasy,” she told Vogue in August 2022. “That’s a lot of what the book is about to me, not needing to romanticize the dead and validate our own experience with them.”
The California native continued: “I feel very confidently that if my mom were still alive, I’d still have eating disorders. I’d still be having a lot of mental health struggles. I’m sure she and I would still live in the same place and I would have no chance of being in a relationship or having any friends. I have no doubt my life would still be very controlled by her if she were alive.”
That same month, Jennette addressed how her mother’s death affected her dynamic with her other family members, telling Time, “My relationship with my brothers has been a great source of camaraderie and support for me. My grandfather provided me a lot of love and support.”
The “Empty Inside” podcast host admitted she wasn’t initially sure she could publicly discuss her childhood.
“Because it’s so personal, I felt like it was important that I had a lot of experience in therapy,” she shared. “I didn’t sit down with a therapist and say: ‘So I want to write a memoir. How can we get me to a place where I’ve got the perspective to do it?’ But it was several years of really intense therapy before I started feeling like I could explore all that personal stuff creatively.”
The Home Alone star, for his part, also reflected on his decision to take a step back from the spotlight amid issues with his parents. “People assume that I’m crazy, or a kook, or damaged. Weird. Cracked. And up until the last year or two, I haven’t really put myself out there at all. So I can understand that,” Culkin told Esquire in March 2020. “It’s also like, OK, everybody, stop acting so freaking shocked that I’m relatively well-adjusted.”
After legally removing his mother and father from his trust fund as a teen, the actor chose to hire an executor for his finances. For Culkin, the decision came with some public misconceptions.
“It’s always misconstrued, that I ‘emancipated’ myself from my parents,” he said at the time. “The story was that I divorced my parents. I just thought I was doing it cleanly — taking my father’s name off, taking my mom’s name off, so my opinion is unbiased. And when I did that, the whole thing kinda ended a lot faster.”
Scroll down for more stars who have had rifts in their family:
