Growing up, Chad Michael Murray developed a close relationship with his dad for a sad reason – when he was 10 years old, his mother disappeared from his life. “She put me on the bus for school one morning, saying she was going out of town for a couple of weeks,” Murray recalled to Seventeen. It was eight years before he saw her again.
Murray was so upset over being abandoned by his mother that he became reclusive. Going to school was also a miserable experience for him because money was tight in his household, and most of his classmates were wealthy. “Everyone else has the coolest clothes and the greatest cars. They would get a beautiful new Lexus for their birthday, and I was driving a 1979 Cougar,” he said in his 2007 Seventeen interview. However, he didn’t grow to resent his father for being unable to provide him with the same luxuries his classmates enjoyed. Instead, his dad earned his respect by doing whatever he could to help Murray and his siblings. “I idolize my father. I mean, he has worked so hard in his life,” the actor shared. As for his mom, it seems that their relationship was never fully repaired, but he did spend some time with her before her death in 2024. “I got to hug it out with her,” he told The Cut. “It was really healing to see where my smile came from.”
