From the greediness of Britney Spears' dad to the chemical castration of Michael Jackson, these true stories of stage parents are mortifying.
Whether fame-hungry themselves or eager to defraud their children, the worst stage mothers and celebrity parents all had something in common: exploiting their kids for their own profit.
Wikimedia CommonsMacauley Culkin (left), Michael Jackson (center), and Lindsay Lohan (right) all navigated greedy, abusive, or enabling celebrity parents.
Both Lindsay Lohan and Drew Barrymore’s moms enabled their addictions while taking handsome cuts of their earnings. At just 10 years old, Brooke Shields’ mother sold nudes of her to Playboy, and Beach Boys’ frontman Brian Wilson was once forced to defecate on the floor by his own father.
From vintage Hollywood to the prescient conservatorship of Britney Spears, these nine cases of cruel celebrity parents are almost too horrifying to believe.
The Abusive Celebrity Parents Who Torpedoed Macaulay Culkin’s Career
Flickr/Alan LightMacaulay Culkin (center-right) legally emancipated himself from his exploitative celebrity parents in 1994.
Kit Culkin was living in cramped conditions with his wife and eight children when his son Macauley became a child star seemingly overnight. For 10-year-old Macaulay, however, that rocky road to fame felt more like hell — and wouldn’t get any better.
Known around the world for his roles in ’90s classics Home Alone and Richie Rich, Macaulay Culkin appeared to live every child’s dream. He got to play mischievous versions of himself onscreen, befriended pop superstar Michael Jackson, and worked with basketball legend Michael Jordan.
His violent father, however, managed that star-studded career into the ground.
“My father was jealous of me. He was a bad man. He was abusive,” said Culkin in later years. “Everything he tried to do in life, I excelled at before I was 10 years old. Our 1994 divorce was one of the best things that’s ever happened … I was like, ‘I’m done guys, hope you all made your money because there is no more coming from me.'”
Before Home Alone, Culkin’s family was so poor that he looked for change in the street. His 1990 break suddenly made him an A-lister who earned $8 million per film. Pocketing 15 percent of his soaring income, Culkin’s celebrity parents bought a Manhattan brownstone.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Kit Culkin’s alcoholism and abuse only worsened.
Flickr/Matt BiddulphThese days, Macaulay Culkin performs with his band, The Pizza Underground, and has become a father himself.
When Culkin hosted Saturday Night Live in November 1991, he was the second-youngest celebrity ever to do so — and his father not only warned him that night to “do good or I’ll hit you,” but warned him not to use any cue cards. He even demanded that the entire cast refrain from reading cards, too. “My father was such a crazy person about it,” Culkin recalled.
“My father was always, you know, abusive, but it didn’t get really, really, really bad until later on.”
With the Home Alone sequel grossing over $359 million, Kit Culkin became one of the highest-paid managers in Hollywood. But he began demanding creative control over his son’s films, forced him into box-office failures, and hassled the studios.
When Kit and his wife Patricia divorced in 1994, Macaulay Culkin chose to do the same.
As his parents fought for custody over him and his riches, Culkin sued them both when he was just 15 — and legally separated from them as his guardians. He has since avoided being in their lives altogether.
The Stage Mother That Introduced Young Drew Barrymore To Drugs
Drew Barrymore at Studio 54 when she was about 9 or 10 years old.
The 1982 blockbuster E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial made 7-year-old Drew Barrymore a child star. But with a father who was a violent alcoholic, her rising career was managed by her unscrupulous stage mother, Jaid.
Not only did Jaid Barrymore introduce her daughter to New York City’s notorious Studio 54 when she was just nine, but also made her dance with famous men — and take drugs with them.
Drew Barrymore later recalled how her mom took her on nightly outings with her adult friends for five nights a week for a year. The child star began describing herself as a “party girl” and dabbled in cocaine and alcohol in adult clubs across Hollywood.
“I had a mom, but she was more like my best friend,” said Barrymore. “She was like, ‘Do you want to go to school and get bullied all day, or do you want to go to Studio 54?’ And I was like, ‘Yes, absolutely!'”
Barrymore’s mother didn’t mind her pouring Baileys over her ice cream and the child star became a daily cocaine user at the age of 12.
Then, at age 13, Barrymore tried to kill herself by slitting her wrists. In 1988, her mother had her institutionalized.
LGI Stock/Corbis/VCG/ Getty ImagesDrew Barrymore with Ratt frontman Stephen Pearcy during one of her nightly 1985 outings in Hollywood.
Barrymore spent 18 months in a psychiatric facility in California, where she often found herself in solitary confinement. Finally, when she was 15, she filed for emancipation from her stage mother.
At 16, Barrymore found herself cleaning toilets for cash with a career that seemed irreparably damaged. But she found roles and revived her reputation and even eventually started her own production company.
Her father died in 2004, and Barrymore said she and her mother do speak these days. Barrymore has had children of her own since, and plans to give them a very different childhood from her own.
“I knew I would not repeat the mistakes of my parents,” said Barrymore. “I knew I would never do that to a kid. I wouldn’t not be there, or put them in too-adult circumstances … I would never have children unless I was incredibly stable, and willing to put them first.”
