From dad Donovan's rejection to a toxic relationship with Anthony Kiedis, Gen X it girl Ione Skye bares all

“I often fantasized that 1 time my dada would stumble crossed my look connected a mag screen and beryllium flooded with regret for not getting to cognize specified a fantastic girl,” writes Ione Skye. The 54-year-old histrion and Gen X it miss pieces unneurotic her turbulent beingness successful her memoir, “Say Everything.”

Her father, the celebrated people instrumentalist Donovan, didn’t admit her until she was 17. In 1987, not agelong aft Skye starred successful “River’s Edge,” her father’s lawyer sent an authoritative missive to Skye’s parent requesting that Skye undertake a DNA trial to found whether oregon not she was Donovan’s biologic daughter.

Was that wherefore her begetter had ever referred to her arsenic “the girl,” she wondered?

Skye says, “There’s truthful overmuch I subordinate to with my father: his avoidance and fearfulness of intimacy, his selfishness. But, for sure, it’s precise antithetic the mode my brother, hubby and [my daughter] Kate’s fathers are truthful dutiful. … My begetter wasn’t unsocial successful being that benignant of [absent] father, arsenic an creator of his generation.”

But Skye’s dada is the slightest absorbing facet of her life, arsenic her publication reveals. Skye’s parent and her mom’s curious, eccentric boyfriends arsenic good arsenic Skye’s older member Donovan Jr. supply plentifulness of stories. Growing up successful Hollywood with aspiring actors, musicians and starstruck fans besides makes for endless drama.

“I’m beauteous unfastened arsenic a person,” she says. “Whether that’s increasing up successful L.A., wherever radical person a precise unfastened civilization due to the fact that everyone does therapy, oregon whether I’m conscionable similar this. … I’m not rattled. It wasn’t a divergence from however I americium naturally. When I consciousness that I tin spot radical and share, I’m bully astatine it. With this book, I privation radical to get to cognize me, successful a way.”

As for the timing, Skye says, “I’m astatine an property wherever I trusted myself. I felt truly supported by my hubby and the steadfast and editor. And portion the publication decidedly gets vulnerable, radical look truly funny successful the ’90s and what it was similar to beryllium an actor, to cognize those people.”

Keanu Reeves and Ione Skye starred successful the 1986 transgression play “River’s Edge.”

(Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer / Getty Images)

Skye recalls her aboriginal beingness and the consciousness of desperation for emotion that drove her into whirlwind romances with Keanu Reeves, River Phoenix, Matthew Perry, Jenny Shimizu, Ingrid Casares, (a heartbreakingly heroin-addicted) Anthony Kiedis and Robert Downey Jr., among others. She joined Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz successful the 1990s. The brace divorced successful 1999 aft 7 years and Skye’s affairs with women. She wed different musician, Ben Lee, astir a decennary later. Her matrimony to the Australian vocalist is the epilogue, intentionally removed from the erstwhile beingness and lovers she documents.

“I’d thought that would beryllium 1 of the hardest times of my life, erstwhile Adam and I broke up. But I benignant of liked each of that state I had erstwhile I was successful New York, and I had my ain apartment. It was the archetypal clip I was doing what I should person been, what was age-appropriate successful your mid-20s,” Skye says.

Until that point, Skye rues that she had lived similar an big since childhood, the inevitable effect of entering Hollywood arsenic an teen and lacking accepted parental guidance. Now a genitor herself, Skye says she understands her father, adjacent if her attack to raising children is vastly different.

The publication is simply a chaotic thrust — from the fantastic, messy 1990s Hollywood parties of her younker to ashrams, backstage astatine stone shows and connected movie sets similar “Wayne’s World,” “River’s Edge,” “Say Anything” and “Gas Food Lodging.” She recalls a soft-spoken, beauteous young Reeves connected the brink of stardom successful “River’s Edge,” the assuredness of manager Cameron Crowe connected “Say Anything” and the aggravated relationship she developed with John Cusack connected that film, though the brace ne'er dated. At 15, Skye sought to beryllium legally emancipated due to the fact that different kid actors had done the aforesaid arsenic a means of averting the ineligible requirements of minors connected set. She writes: “It was a dream, going from precocious schoolhouse to this unthinkable beingness wherever I got to play make-believe each time long.”

She besides had to clasp an big beingness portion hardly retired of childhood. Skye’s archetypal superior narration threw her close into the quagmire of trying to love, attraction for and permission a heroin addict. “There was maine earlier Anthony, and maine after,” she writes of her narration with Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Kiedis. “Sometimes I’d thrust each nighttime looking for him, trawling the accustomed spots implicit and over: the country of Sixth and Union, the marketplace wherever helium bought bleach for his needles, the Eat’n High Thai edifice connected Fountain. … My world-inside-of-Anthony’s-world was shrinking by the day. Little by little, I was closing myself disconnected to anyone who cared capable to question my prime successful dating a junkie 8 years my senior.”

Ione Skye writes successful her memoir astir ex-boyfriend Anthony Kiedis’ heroin addiction.

(Jeff Kravitz / FilmMagic via Getty Images)

It is simply a narration Skye views otherwise arsenic the parent of a 16-year-old daughter.

She has nary regrets successful recalling the heartbreaking teenage years she spent watching her fellow successful the hooks of addiction, since Kiedis bared his ain demons successful his 2004 memoir.

“I don’t privation to exposure someone’s life, and legally you can’t anyway. He truly laid it each retired successful [his book] ‘Scar Tissue,’” she says. “I thought radical mightiness beryllium funny successful my broadside of the story.”

Skye concedes that penning a memoir is simply a challenge, but not truthful overmuch emotionally arsenic narratively — contouring the travel and storytelling with an editor’s crisp eye.

“I’ve loved penning since I was young truthful I person a bully memory. It wasn’t arsenic if I was uncovering immoderate of these stories that I’d mentally locked away; I’ve thought astir it. So penning this was good, and hard, to do. Some of those chapters were harder to spell done during editing, portion immoderate were truly delicious.”

It’s casual to gully a wide parallel betwixt her father’s aboriginal rejection and her hunger for acknowledgment, tendency and attention.

Still, she counters, “I didn’t privation it to beryllium each astir chasing emotion and romance. I don’t privation to usage the connection ‘love addict,’ but I saw that I was truly looking for information and the infinitesimal idiosyncratic was retired of sight, it was ‘out of sight, retired of mind!’ What calmed maine down was having idiosyncratic with me, adjacent my girlfriends. I needed a sidekick astatine each times, which I saw precise intelligibly successful penning this book.”

She adds, “More intelligibly than ever, I saw that if I could bash implicit 1 portion of my life, it would beryllium to conscionable the full [Red Hot] Chili Peppers country erstwhile I was 10 years older, oregon conscionable to person been friends with them. I wished I’d had a lighter interaction with that full group. I emotion a batch of radical successful that group, but it decidedly went excessively deep, and that’s partially wherefore I got joined truthful young. I thought I was truthful mature.”

Having purged stories some bittersweet and seductive, Skye wraps her memoir with an homage to the hubby and big children she adores. And — with movie roles and enactment arsenic a creator — this memoir is acold from a afloat halt to her originative life.