Heather Graham recently revealed that she hasn’t spoken to her parents in 30 years.
Now she’s opened up about her decision to share that information with the world.
The Austin Powers actress revealed the family rift in an essay for The Wall Street Journal, sharing that she “stopped talking to [her] parents when [she] was 25” and is now “estranged from them”.
In a new interview with People, the 52-year-old actress reflected on her decision to reveal the truth about her family situation.
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“I mean, it is a little vulnerable to talk about in an interview,” she explained.
“And at the same point, I know that there’s a lot of other people who are going through something like it, so I guess I just feel like being honest about my life and not pretending that everything is always fantastic.”
While she’s opened up about her family’s disapproval of her chosen career, Graham says, “I’m OK just being who I am.”
Graham said she “didn’t get into all the details” about why she doesn’t talk to her parents in the essay. But while she may not speak to her parents, she has “very great wonderful friends” that she can count on.
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“And so that is a really lucky thing to have in my life,” she told People.
Writing about her estrangement from her family for The Wall Street Journal, Graham recalled that “home and schools weren’t happy places growing up.”
Her father James was an FBI agent who disapproved of her choice to work in Hollywood.
”He regularly told me that the entertainment industry was evil, and that Hollywood would claim my soul if I became an actress and appeared in anything with sexual content,” she wrote, explaining her parents were “part of a generation that didn’t believe in therapy or discussing personal things, so I never felt I could talk to them.”
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Graham left her family home at 18 after the release of her breakout film License to Drive.
“I said to myself, ‘I’ve got to get out of here, I’ve got to be successful, and I’ve got to be a movie star,'” Graham said about her “freeing” move into a West Hollywood apartment that she managed to share with a high school classmate.
Now she has a home in LA and a loft in New York City, saying she enjoys “sitting on [her] couch in LA at dusk as the sun sets and lights come on in the city below.”
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