Demi Moore on Surviving a Difficult Childhood, Sexual Assault, and Overcoming Addiction

The Hollywood icon opened up her personal struggles in 2019 when she published her memoir, "Inside Out," revealing her journey with substance abuse and sexual assault at the hands of a man who alleged he was paid by her mother.

Demi Moore has long captivated her audiences with compelling performances onscreen, and won over the hearts and minds of many with her charm. Her story, however, began with a tumultuous upbringing in an unstable home.

Moore opened up about the earlier years of her life in her tell-all memoir, "Inside Out," detailing how she became a victim of rape and succumbed to addiction. She grew up under the care of her parents, her mother Virginia King and father Danny Guynes, both of whom battled addiction.

The former couple, who had a turbulent on-and-off relationship, had married after Moore was born. The pair constantly uprooted the actress and her siblings, moving across the country to escape debt collectors and infidelities.

In her book, Moore recalled the first time her mother attempted suicide when she was 12. "I remember using my fingers, the small fingers of a child, to dig the pills my mother had tried to swallow, out of her mouth," she wrote.

While promoting the memoir on "Good Morning America," she told Diane Sawyer that there were many more attempts thereafter. In retrospect, Moore saw the "life-changing moment" as the end of her childhood.

Later on, the actress found out that the man she knew and loved as her dad, Guynes, was not her biological father. Upon learning this, she felt she was unwanted and didn't "deserve to be here." Her parents eventually divorced, and Moore continued to live with her mother in a home that grew increasingly unstable over time.

As a teenager, her mother began bringing her along at bars so men would notice her. At age 15, she came home one day to an older man they knew in their apartment with a key. Moore wrote in her book that the man raped her.

"For decades, I didn't even think of it as rape," but rather "something I caused, something I felt obligated to do because this man expected it from me," she said. The man later insinuated that her mother had known all along about his intentions.

"How does it feel to be whored by your mother for five hundred dollars?" she recalled him asking. "I think, in my deep heart, no. I don't think it was a straightforward transaction," she told Sawyer about whether she thought her mom sold her.

"But she still did give him the access and put me in harm's way," she said. Moore also opened up about her struggle with substance abuse. After her 16th birthday, she moved out of her mom's apartment to go and build a future of her own.

"The problem was, when I did have a drink, I couldn't stop; there was no little voice in my head saying, 'That's enough, Demi.' There were no brakes," she wrote in "Inside Out." She also revealed that she began using cocaine when she traveled to Brazil to film 1984's "Blame It on Rio."

She used so much, she nearly "burned a hole" through her nostrils. It wasn't until "St. Elmo's Fire" director/co-writer Joel Schumacher, along with the producers of the 1985 romantic comedy asked her to go to rehab and she got sober. She unfortunately relapsed in 2012, but got the help she needed and has been sober since.