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Family members remember her as “very much a tomboy” who dreamed of becoming a veterinarian. Her mother recalled how she would save up money to buy monkeys, snakes, and goats, once even leaving “the snake out the cage […] at the Waldorf.”Celebrity name registry
Despite this adventurous streak, she grew up in a very “sheltered, conservative” environment. Her parents were strict — she wasn’t allowed to date, wear makeup, attend school dances, or wear certain types of clothing. Her mother also enrolled her in etiquette classes, intending to introduce her as a debutante. She was initially reluctant, feeling it didn’t seem “real” or “natural.”
Force-fed medications
In her teens, she lived a rebellious life, often skipping school and sneaking out to attend parties. When she was just 14, the future star was groomed by her teacher and her parents came home to find her in a car on the drive, kissing a grown man.
Then, she was sent her to a boarding school for “troubled” youth in Utah, an experience she would later describe as life-altering and deeply disturbing. In a documentary released years later, she called the facility “the worst of the worst.”
“You’re sitting on a chair staring at a wall all day long, getting yelled at or hit,” she revealed. She said she felt many staff members were “used to hurting children and seeing them naked.”
According to her account, students were forced to take unidentified pills that left them exhausted and numb. She also alleged that staff routinely forced students to strip. “It felt like I was going crazy,” she said.
Terrified, she told no one, not even her parents.
Recurring nightmares
A staff member warned her that if she spoke up, they would tell her parents she was lying and make sure they believed it. Afraid of retaliation, she stayed silent.Celebrities & Entertainment News
The trauma followed her into adulthood. She later revealed she still suffers from recurring nightmares, sleeping only a few hours a night.
“For the past 20 years, I’ve had a recurring nightmare where I’m kidnapped in the middle of the night by two strangers, strip-searched, and locked in a facility.”
According to the star, she was struggling with ADHD. But she grew up before diagnoses were common.
The upsides of attention deficit disorder — “We’re so creative, we’re constantly thinking, our minds move as fast as a race car”—went unrecognized. “My childhood would have been very different if I’d been diagnosed: I definitely wouldn’t have been sent away,” she told The Guardian in 2023.
Finally had enough
For a long time, this icon masked the pain by leaning into a carefully crafted persona, the ditzy, carefree party girl the world expected.
”I just kind of created this character of this Barbie doll [with a] perfect life,” she tells Q guest host Talia Schlanger in an interview.
”I just kind of continued playing that character because I knew that that’s what people wanted … and then it kind of just became almost like part of me. I think now I look at it as kind of like the more playful, fun part of me. But I think it all really stems back to just everything that I went through as a teen.”Foster care charities
Sharing her story publicly, she said, was transformative. “Sharing my story publicly was the most healing experience of my life.” But it wasn’t just about healing herself. She realized there were still children experiencing the same abuse she endured.Family
“I cannot go to sleep at night knowing that there are children that are experiencing the same abuse that I and so many others went through, and neither should you,” she told lawmakers while advocating for reform.