Inside Out: A Memoir

“Inside Out by Demi Moore, is an entertaining, enlightening memoir from a popular, controversial actress.”

Demi Guynes was born in 1962 in New Mexico to teen parents, Ginny and—so it was thought—Danny Guynes. After shuffling through her parents’ papers as a teen, she learned that her biological father was Charlie, whom Ginny married and divorced, to then marry Danny when Demi was just a few months old.

Brother Morgan was born when Demi was five. Craziness ensued with her parents’ fighting, her mother’s suicide attempts, Demi’s kidney ailments, and her father’s alcoholism. A lot for a little girl to deal with. When she was 11 and her mom tried to swallow pills, Demi grabbed them from Ginny’s throat.

Once, her dad came home drunk, shot a hole in a wall, and grazed his head—all while Demi saw blood everywhere. Her parents often cheated on each other, frequently taking breaks away, while separating Demi and her brother for long breaks.

At 13 in California, Demi was already driving a car, drinking alcohol, smoking pot and cigarettes. When Demi was 15, her mother sold her for $500, for sex with an older man.

Demi wasn’t allowed back to one of the many schools she had attended over the years due to her family’s nomadic ways. But she was permitted to go to school for four hours a day, and to work for another four hours a day. She liked having her own spending money.

She quit school at 16 when she met a musician at the famed Troubadour in Hollywood. “Between sets I maneuvered Freddy into the bathroom. Within a month, I’d left Tom (another boyfriend) to move in with him.”

Demi married Freddy Moore at 18, and her father committed suicide also while she was 18. She began nude modeling.

St. Elmo’s Fire was her first successful movie. Newfound success enhanced issues with body weight, cocaine usage, and alcoholism.

She tried rehab after St. Elmo’s Fire. Fame brought Bruce Willis, who was already a big star from the TV series, Moonlighting. Both Moore and Willis wanted children, so they soon got married.

“Being a mother felt totally natural. It’s one of the few things I can confidently say I was innately good at.”

One of her movies, Ghost, was a smash hit, and she’s had several other successful movies throughout her career, including Indecent Proposal.

Three daughters were born to Demi and Bruce. Rumer in 1988, Scout in 1991, and Tallulah in 1994. Though she worked hard after each pregnancy, she still suffered from a distorted body image.

“When you are afflicted with a disease, you can’t just decide not to have it, no matter how miserable it’s making you.”

Moore was offered $12 million for her next movie, Striptease, which was the largest amount ever offered to a woman in Hollywood in the early nineties. A bidding war followed with the movie G.I. Jane as well.

Demi’s mother was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer and a brain tumor. Although her mother had abandoned her throughout her life, Moore took on the role of caregiver.

“When I decided to care for my mother at the end of her life, I began to heal the wound.” Ginny died at 54, when Demi was almost 36.

Shortly after her mother’s death, Bruce and Demi separated. “The defense armor I’d become accustomed to wearing was so ironclad, there was no room inside it for someone else.”

Demi wanted to take five years off from work to help raise her daughters. In 2003, she got a call from Drew Barrymore, offering her a Charlie’s Angels movie, and promising her the shoot would only take 20 days.

While in New York doing press for the movie, she met Ashton Kutcher, then-star of That ’70s Show. He was 25, she was 40. A whirlwind romance ensued, often with negative media coverage, and they soon married. After being away from alcohol for many years, Demi thought she could be a casual drinker again.

They began practicing Kabbalah together. Demi got pregnant, but after six months she miscarried, at 42. They eventually got married but before long, Kutcher asked Moore if she’d take part in a sexual threesome. Later, Kutcher cheated on her with a 21-year-old woman.

They soon divorced, and Moore was devastated. After a while, she realized she hadn’t paid much attention to her daughters when Tallulah was arrested for underage drinking at 17.

Demi began to starve herself. She went to rehab, and it took three years before her girls would get back to communicating with her. “Taking responsibility for your own reaction is the gateway to freedom.”

If the reader can overlook the consistent overuse of colons throughout—perhaps a stronger editor might have been hired—overall, Inside Out by Demi Moore, is an entertaining, enlightening memoir from a popular, controversial actress.