Liza Minnelli gets candid about her past like never before in her upcoming memoir, Kids, Wait Till You Hear This.
On Friday, February 20, People shared exclusive excerpts from the book, which hits shelves March 10, two days before the EGOT winner’s milestone 80th birthday.
In the beginning of her book, the Cabaret star — whose parents are, of course, beloved actress Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli — reflected on her unconventional childhood with her half-siblings Lorna and Joey Luft.
Liza Minnelli Actress with mother Actress Judy Garland Newscom/(Mega Agency TagID: mrpphotos056912.jpg) [Photo via Mega Agency]
“I’ll never forget the day she [Garland] sat us down and gave Lorna and me a choice; Joey was less than 1 year old. We could stay in school in Los Angeles. Or we could come on the road with her,” Minnelli recalls in the memoir, which was written with Michael Feinstein. “We’d be in and out of different hotels, schools (I’d eventually attend 22 of them), and cities. ‘When do we leave?’ we answered in unison.”
After her parents’ divorce, the mother-daughter roles were reversed.
“At 13, I was my mother’s caretaker—a nurse, doctor, pharmacologist, and psychiatrist rolled into one,” she recounts. “I lost count of the times I called doctors to say she’d run out of pills. I’d say: ‘I’m a kid! Please fill my mama’s prescription!’”
Garland, who famously starred in The Wizard of Oz, struggled with an addiction to prescription drugs before she died in 1969 as the result of an accidental overdose of barbiturates.
In 2017, Minnelli spoke candidly about her relationship with her legendary mother in an interview with Closer. “If she was happy, she wasn’t just happy. She was ecstatic. And when she was sad, she was sadder than anyone. There were no middle,” she recalled at the time. “I was used only to screaming attacks or excessive love bouts, rivers of money or no money at all, seeing my mother constantly or not seeing her for weeks.”
Despite her hardships, Minnelli is grateful to have been raised by the screen legend. “For the rest of my life,” she told Closer, “I will be proud to be Judy Garland’s daughter.”