She might be a Hollywood star now, but once upon a time, Minka Kelly was a little girl caught up in the middle of her mother’s financial woes. Minka’s mother, Maureen, struggled to make ends meet, so much so that sometimes she could not afford basic needs like rent. Eventually, when Maureen started stripping, she took Kelly with her to the club. “If she made a lot of money that night, we’d go grocery shopping at 2 a.m.,” the “Night Hunter” star recounted in her memoir.
Despite her rough childhood, however, Kelly learned to appreciate her. Maureen died from cancer in 2008, and Kelly has since remained grateful for her mother. “I spent a lot of my youth wishing my mom was something she wasn’t, wishing she was like the other moms. I only was able to really appreciate how special she was when I got much older. In fact, when it was maybe a little too late,” she admitted to People.
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Often left to fend for herself by a struggling mother, by the age of 17, Kelly was living out of her high school boyfriend’s room. She writes he was not only verbally abusive toward her but also coerced her into making an R-rated video. “I hardly even remembered making the tape,” she wrote of the ordeal, per Page Six. “I’d become such a master at leaving my body when things were uncomfortable.” But abuse was not the only way the relationship left an impact. She almost had a baby.
If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.
