Actress Ione Skye, 54, is opening up about her relationship with Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis, who she started dating when she was 16 and the rocker was 24 in her new memoir Say Everything.
Skye tells PEOPLE that their relationship is actually what inspired her to tell her life story in the first place.
“These girls on TikTok were saying things like, ‘How could my mom let me be with Anthony?'” she says of their relationship being dissected on social media in recent years.
“And I sort of clapped back, not in an aggressive way, but I was like, ‘Well, my mom was really upset that I was with a rockstar like Anthony Kiedis.’ And I don’t know, I kind of started feeling like I was able to tell my side of the story, and I had a lot to tell,” she says, of deciding to write Say Everything, which she says was a three-year endeavor.
In her memoir, she writes of her and Kiedis’ romance, which was complicated by the rocker’s heroin addiction. She also writes that when she was 17, they became pregnant and decided not to keep the child. She says the decision was a painful one.
“I was the type of girl who’d wanted a baby since I was a baby, who used to fantasize about finding a swaddled infant on my doorstep or catching a flying ghost baby with a butterfly net … But fantasizing was different from seeing,” she writes in the book. “I couldn’t see having a baby at this point.”
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She added that she blamed herself for not being more careful but has no regrets over the decision.
“I was taking care of myself now, making a choice that felt good and important for my future,” she writes. “I would not have a baby at 17, with someone who didn’t want to be a dad, wouldn’t commit to me and had anger issues. Not to mention the heroin.”
Skye tells PEOPLE that she was nervous about how open she was in the book, but decided it was worth it to tell the full truth about her life. That includes having affairs while she was married to Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz, exploring her bisexuality, doing drugs and eventually settling into a happy marriage with rocker Ben Lee, with whom she shares a 15-year-old daughter.
Skye says while some people she wrote about in the book had a chance to read it, she didn’t talk to Kiedis.
Courtesy of Ione Skye
“I stay in touch with his mother, but not with him,” she says. “I’m very curious about what he’ll think — he and my father. They’re the ones I’m most nerve-wracked about. But everyone who has read it says it’s a good read.”
Skye’s dad is ‘Mellow Yellow’ singer Donovan, and she also writes of their chilly relationship when she was a child, as well as how they’ve since become close.
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Skye, who recently wrapped filming Anaconda in Australia with Paul Rudd and Jack Black, says now that the book is done, she’s looking forward to working in films again.
“I’m up for it,” she says of returning to acting. “I’d love another run. Acting is a part of my life that I’ve always loved. And then if it quiets down again, I’ll also be happy to do what I do — painting, and parenting, and just doing my own thing.”
Say Everything is available now, wherever books are sold.
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