Minka Kelly Talks About "Chaotic and Unstable" Childhood, Says Her Mom Took Her to Strip Clubs
Minka Kelly is well-known and loved for her roles in popular television shows like Friday Night Lights and Parenthood. However, her life has been anything but easy. In her new memoir, Tell Me Everything, Kelly opens up about her traumatic childhood, including details of her mother's addiction and domestic violence and how Kelly found her way to Hollywood.
Kelly reveals that when she was a child, her mother, Maureen Dumont Kelly, often took her to the Crazy Girls strip club in Los Angeles where Maureen performed. "If she made a lot of money that night, we'd go grocery shopping at 2 a.m.," the actress recalls.
"My childhood was colorful and chaotic, unstable and inconsistent, unpredictable and hard a lot of the time. But the silver lining is that it made me a very adaptable person," Kelly told People in an exclusive interview.
The Roommate actress, who is now 42 years old, says she spent a lot of her youth wishing her mom was different and wishing she was like the other moms. She only came to appreciate how special her mother was when she got much older. In fact, Kelly admits that when she finally came to this realization, it was "maybe a little too late."
The first few pages of Tell Me Everything reveals that Kelly performed in peep shows at an Albuquerque adult-video store when she was just 17. Having been shuttled around between family friends and acquaintances while her mom left her for weeks and months at a time, Kelly was determined to try and support herself.
She said, "I started with the scariest part. The part that I carried the most shame about, the part that I felt the most embarrassed of, the part that I hid my whole life, and the part that I've had people make me feel bad about. And I felt like that was just where I had to be the bravest."
Kelly's resilience and determination eventually led her to Hollywood, where she landed her breakthrough role in Friday Night Lights. But her life in the entertainment industry wasn't without its challenges. While Maureen was in and out of her life, the two became estranged after Maureen asked her daughter for more financial support. They did not rekindle the relationship until after her mom was diagnosed with colon cancer and given two years to live.
Upon a therapist's suggestion, Kelly confronted Maureen about her upbringing. Kelly recalled, "I saw her start to crumble in shame and regret and pain when she was already in so much of all of those things, and I just immediately thought, I don't need to do this to her. I only need to forgive her and love her. She's already broken. What is the point of pouring salt on the wound? I'm fine. I just want to take care of her right now."
In her last days, Maureen was in a hospice facility in Albuquerque. Kelly recalls how she wrapped her arms and legs around her mom and held her as she died. One of Kelly's biggest regrets is not spending her mom's last Thanksgiving together. She said, "Because that was her favorite holiday, and she really wanted me to be there. I just was like, 'Ah, I'll see you for the next one,' knowing deep down there wasn't going to be another. And I think about that a lot. That still breaks my heart."
