She’s got that kind of energy that just pulls you in, and a smile that practically carried her straight to the top of Hollywood.
Honestly, you’d never guess she grew up in total chaos. But the truth is, her childhood in L.A. was anything but glamorous.
She was raised by her mom, Maureen — a single parent who danced in strip clubs to get by — and things got so tough they even ended up living in a storage unit because they couldn’t afford rent.
Named ”Sexiest Woman Alive” in 2011
We’ve all faced challenges in life, but the Hollywood star we’re taking a closer look at today really had the odds stacked against her.
Yet today, her trophy case is overflowing, and she’s even been named the “Sexiest Woman Alive.”
She was born in California in 1980, the result of a short fling between her mom and former Aerosmith guitarist Rick Dufay. Most of the time, she was raised by her mom and her mom’s on-and-off boyfriend, David Gonzalez.
Even as a seven-year-old, she knew her life was different. Growing up in L.A. with a single mom who worked as an exotic dancer, money was always tight. At one point, things got so bad they couldn’t afford their apartment, and ended up living in a storage shed just to have a roof over their heads.
“I spent a lot of my youth wishing my mom was something she wasn’t, wishing she was like the other moms,” she once reflected. “I only really appreciated how special she was when I got older. In fact, maybe a little too late.”
Her childhood was chaotic and unpredictable, packed with instability and hardship. She often went along with her mom to Crazy Girls, a local topless bar that had been open since 1983. The club was famous for mixing rock ‘n’ roll shows with exotic pole dances, Motley Crüe even shot their infamous “Girls, Girls, Girls” video there.
“When she made a lot of money that night, we’d go grocery shopping at 2 a.m.,” the actress told People when her memoir was released.
“My childhood was colorful and chaotic… unstable and inconsistent, unpredictable and hard a lot of the time. But the silver lining is that it made me a very adaptable person,” she says.
To make ends meet, her mother once tried to smuggle drugs across the Mexico –U.S. border, but she was caught and spent time in jail. While her mother was incarcerated, the actress was sent to live with various friends and acquaintances. In one of those homes, she even experienced physical abuse.
By the time she was a teenager, she was fending for herself and started performing in peep shows at an Albuquerque adult-video store.
“I started with the scariest part,” she recalls. “The part I carried the most shame about… the part I hid my whole life. And I felt like that was where I had to be the bravest.”
