WHOOPI Goldberg believes her daughter became a teen mother because she wanted to get “revenge” on her after struggling with her level of fame.
The Oscar-nominated actress became a grandmother at the age of 30, after her daughter Alex became pregnant at just 15.
In her new memoir, Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me, Whoopi recalls her shock upon receiving the news that her only child was expecting so young.
Whoopi herself gave birth at age 18, but feared her daughter would miss out on life with other teenagers if she also became a young mother.
“Years later, Alexandrea told me that she thinks she got pregnant as a teenager because she wanted someone in her life who didn’t know who Whoopi Goldberg was,” she wrote.
“I thought she was getting revenge on me for being gone so long. I understood.”
Whoopi admits that she was often away while her star rose and she was booking more acting gigs.
She describes in the book how she understood that Alex would be mad at her for a long time for not being around as much as she should, but she was focused on building a better life for them.
Whoopi remembers her daughter getting “annoyed” when people pushed her out of the way to meet her mother or sat next to them at dinner and asked for a photograph.
HEROIN ADDICTION
Although she kept in touch with her every day during filming, she said Alex was often looked after by her mother, Emma Harris, and felt like she was in good hands.
It was her mother who entered the delivery room with Alex when she gave birth to her first child, Amara, on November 13, 1989.
Whoopi said her daughter came to forgive her and the two remain close to this day, while she has two more sons, Mason and Jerzey.
In March 2014, Whoopi became a great-grandmother when Amarah gave birth to a daughter named Charli Rose.
The star had Alex with her first husband, Alvin Martin, who was her drug counselor when she was a teenager after she became addicted to heroin while growing up in New York.
She previously told The Sunday Telegraph: “I was young, homeless and addicted to heroin. I dropped out of high school and started using drugs. It’s as simple as that.
“I was a child of the 60s, so I ingested as many mind-altering substances as I could.”
She added: “It was a rite of passage. And when I got clean, I was convinced I wanted to be an actor.”
BIRTH STRUGGLE
Whoopi and Alvin were married for six years, from 1973 to 1979, and she admits in the book that she was the one who left the marriage after realizing she should never have gotten married.
Although she liked her husband, she claimed that he did not realize that she always wanted to act or act.
She moved back in with her mother, who asked her if she was sure about marriage before walking down the aisle.
The star said she loved her daughter, but didn’t just want to be a wife and mother.
Whoopi was also married to director David Claessen from 1986 to 1988 and to Lyle Trachtenberg from 1994 to 1995, but admits that marriage was not for her.
The View co-host has since been open about not wanting to live with a man again.
She also explained in the memoir, released on May 7, that she only had one child because she found childbirth very difficult.
The 68-year-old star likened it to “shoving a ninety-two-inch TV screen into a small hole,” saying she wasn’t prepared for “that level of pain.”
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