Eric Roberts is laying it all on the table.
In his new memoir, Runaway Train: Or the Story of My Life So Far, Eric Roberts, 68, tells the story of his troubled upbringing in Georgia, the many ups and downs of his long acting career and offers a public apology to his sister Julia Roberts, 56, with whom he’s long had a complicated relationship.
Roberts, who was just announced as one of the celebrity competitors on the upcoming season of Dancing With The Stars, is the son of Walter Roberts and Betty Lou Bredemus, who ran a progressive acting school for children in Atlanta, Ga. He describes his father as a man who drank and was prone to violent outbursts, and who was raised by an abusive father himself. A man, he writes, who grew jealous of his son’s career and “was a very screwed-up individual and not safe for me, or anyone, to have as a father.”
After his parents divorced in 1971, his mother married Michael Motes. Julia, who was 10 years younger than Eric, and their sister Lisa, now 59, lived with them in Smyrna, Ga., along with their younger sister, Nancy Motes (the daughter of Betty and Michael). Eric stayed with Walter, who eventually died of cancer in 1977.
When he was 17, Eric moved to New York to pursue acting and had early success in King of the Gypsies in 1978, followed by Bob Fosse’s Star 80 and Pope of Greenwich Village, alongside Mickey Rourke, in 1984. His starring role as an escaped convict in the 1985 thriller Runaway Train earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
His over five-decade career, which includes some 700 credits, was full of many highs and spectacular lows. He turned down the role of Jesus in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, forever losing his chance with the acclaimed director. In 1981, he was in a serious car accident that put him in a three-day coma, and which he says, along with years of drug abuse, affected his memory and recall.
By the time his sister Julia moved to New York in 1985 and began to embark on her own acting career, he was addicted to cocaine. At the time, he was the more famous actor, and later claimed more than once of his superstar sister, “If it wasn’t for me, there would be no Julia Roberts.”
Over four decades later, his new book backpedals that assertion. He writes, “I hope Julia will accept this public apology. It was an asinine thing to have said.”
Roberts admits his drug use sabotaged his relationships with his sisters. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they suffered from PTSD from when it was dangerous to be around me,” he writes. “Lisa and Julia needed love and protection — instead they got fear and uncertainty.”
“Of course, the biggest consequence of my drug use was losing Emma,” he writes of the custody battle over his daughter, Emma Roberts, who he shares with mom Kim Cunningham. The two broke up when Emma was a baby.
According to Eric, who’s been married to Eliza Garret since 1992, things fell apart with his sister Julia when she supported Cunningham in the custody battle, at a time when his cocaine addiction was out of control. He does not go into detail in his memoir but admits it was the right decision.
“I imagine I will remain as Julia’s brother and Emma Roberts’ dad for the rest of my life,” he writes. “I’d like to make good on that, to move aside proudly and with grace. That’s part of the reason for writing the book.”
He feels he’s come to terms with his father, too. “I knew that I loved him. I couldn’t live down the shame of loving him or of who he was, someone capable of terrible things,” he writes. “I was ashamed of being so much of him and so much like him.”
As he concludes, “If you’ve ever loved a parent … with a cruel nature, it’s never too late to begin to recover from the shame and pain of it all.”
Runaway Train is on sale now, wherever books are sold.
