Eric Roberts Opens Up About Abuse and Path to Healing in Intimate Memoir | Memoir

Eric Roberts is laying all of it on the desk.

In his new memoir, Runaway Train: Or the Story of My Life So Far, Eric Roberts, 68, tells the story of his troubled upbringing in Georgia, the various ups and downs of his lengthy appearing profession and affords a public apology to his sister Julia Roberts, 56, with whom he’s lengthy had a sophisticated relationship.

Roberts, who was simply introduced as one of many celeb opponents on the upcoming season of Dancing With The Stars, is the son of Walter Roberts and Betty Lou Bredemus, who ran a progressive appearing faculty for kids in Atlanta, Ga. He describes his father as a person who drank and was inclined to violent outbursts, and who was raised by an abusive father himself. A person, he writes, who grew jealous of his son’s profession and “was a very screwed-up individual and not safe for me, or anyone, to have as a father.”

After his dad and mom divorced in 1971, his mom married Michael Motes. Julia, who was 10 years youthful than Eric, and their sister Lisa, now 59, lived with them in Smyrna, Ga., together with their youthful sister, Nancy Motes (the daughter of Betty and Michael). Eric stayed with Walter, who ultimately died of most cancers in 1977. 

When he was 17, Eric moved to New York to pursue appearing and had early success in King of the Gypsies in 1978, adopted by Bob Fosse’s Star 80 and Pope of Greenwich Village, alongside Mickey Rourke, in 1984. His starring position as an escaped convict in the 1985 thriller Runaway Train earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

His over five-decade profession, which incorporates some 700 credit, was stuffed with many highs and spectacular lows. He turned down the position of Jesus in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, without end dropping his probability with the acclaimed director. In 1981, he was in a critical automotive accident that put him in a three-day coma, and which he says, together with years of drug abuse, affected his reminiscence and recall. 

By the time his sister Julia moved to New York in 1985 and started to embark on her personal appearing profession, he was addicted to cocaine. At the time, he was the extra well-known actor, and later claimed greater than as soon as of his celebrity sister, “If it wasn’t for me, there would be no Julia Roberts.” 

Over 4 a long time later, his new e book backpedals that assertion. He writes, “I hope Julia will accept this public apology. It was an asinine thing to have said.” 

Roberts admits his drug use sabotaged his relationships together with his sisters. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they suffered from PTSD from when it was dangerous to be around me,” he writes. “Lisa and Julia needed love and protection — instead they got fear and uncertainty.”  

“Of course, the biggest consequence of my drug use was losing Emma,” he writes of the custody battle over his daughter, Emma Roberts, who he shares with mother Kim Cunningham. The two broke up when Emma was a child.

According to Eric, who’s been married to Eliza Garret since 1992, issues fell aside together with his sister Julia when she supported Cunningham in the custody battle, at a time when his cocaine habit was uncontrolled. He doesn't go into element in his memoir however admits it was the suitable choice. 

“I imagine I will remain as Julia’s brother and Emma Roberts’ dad for the rest of my life,” he writes. “I’d like to make good on that, to move aside proudly and with grace. That’s part of the reason for writing the book.”

He feels he’s come to phrases together with his father, too. “I knew that I loved him. I couldn’t live down the shame of loving him or of who he was, someone capable of terrible things,” he writes. “I was ashamed of being so much of him and so much like him.”

As he concludes, “If you’ve ever loved a parent … with a cruel nature, it’s never too late to begin to recover from the shame and pain of it all.”  

Runaway Train is on sale now, wherever books are bought.