WHOOPI Goldberg believes her daughter became a teenage mother because she wanted to get ‘revenge’ on her after struggling with her level of fame.
The Oscar-nominated actress became a grandmother in her 30s after her daughter Alex fell pregnant at just 15.
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In her new memoir, Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me, Whoopi recalls her shock at being told the news her only child was expecting at such a young age.
Whoopi herself gave birth at 18, but she was concerned her daughter would be missing out on life with other teenagers if she also became a young mom.
“Years later, Alexandrea told me that she thinks she got pregnant as a teenager because she wanted one person 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 much. I got it.”
Whoopi admits she was often gone as her star rose and she was booking more acting gigs.
She describes in the book how she understood Alex would be mad at her for a long time for not being around as much as she should have been, but she was focused on building a better life for them.
Whoopi recalls her daughter being “p***ed off” when people would push her out of the way to meet her mom, or sit down next to them at dinner and ask for a photograph.
HEROIN ADDICTION
Although she was in touch with her every day while she was filming, she said Alex was often cared for by her mother, Emma Harris, and she felt she was in good hands.
Her mom was the one to go in the delivery room with Alex when she gave birth to her first child, Amara, on November 13, 1989.
Whoopi said her daughter grew to forgive her and the pair remain close to this day, while she has two more children, 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 had been her drug counselor when she was a teenager after she became hooked on 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 into drugs. 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.”
CHILDBIRTH STRUGGLE
Whoopi and Alvin were married for six years from 1973 to 1979 and she admits in the book she was the one to leave their marriage as she realized she never should have tied the knot.
Although she liked her husband, she claimed he hadn’t realized she always wanted to act or perform.
She moved back in with her mother, who had asked her if she was sure about the marriage before she walked down the aisle.
The star said she loved her daughter but didn’t only want to be a wife and mother.
Whoopi was also married to director David Claessen from 1986 to 1988 and Lyle Trachtenberg from 1994 to 1995, but admits marriage was not for her.
The View co-host has been open since about not wanting to live with a man again.
She also explained in the memoir, which is released on May 7, that she only had one child because she found childbirth too difficult.
The 68-year-old star compared it to “shoving a ninety-two-inch TV screen through a tiny hole” saying she wasn’t prepared for “that level of pain.”
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