Who are Minka Kelly's parents? Actress opens up on traumatic childhood in new memoir

Minka Kelly recently spoke to People Magazine about her upcoming memoir, Tell Me Everything.

In the memoir, she talked about how she carried a lot of “shame” all throughout her childhood. Kelly explained that she was brought up by a single mother, who worked as an exotic dancer, but the mother-daughter duo struggled with poverty for the longest time.

During the interview, she stated:

"I spent a lot of my youth wishing my mom was something she wasn't, wishing she was like the other moms. I only was able to really appreciate how special she was when I got much older. In fact when it was maybe a little too late."

Minka Kelly talks at length about her traumatic childhood, in her memoir, "Tell Me Everything." (Image via Minka Kelly)

She also talked about how she faced domestic violence, as her mother often took her to strip clubs in Los Angeles, where she often performed. The actress recalled how they would go grocery shopping only when her mother earned some money at the strip club. Speaking about her childhood, she said:

"My childhood was colorful and chaotic, unstable and inconsistent, unpredictable and hard a lot of the times. But the silver lining is that it made me a very adaptable person."

Minka Kelly was born to Maureen and onetime Aerosmith guitarist Rick Dufay, who was not in her life till she turned 16 or 17.

Minka Kelly and her father, Aerosmith guitarist Rick Dufay. (Image via Splash News)

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Minka Kelly found out she was pregnant when she was 17

Minka Kelly opened up about her traumatic childhood, her boyfriend during teen years, and how she became pregnant when she was 17. She talked about how she moved in with Rudy, her high school boyfriend, and his family, because her mother had run away.

She explained how Rudy asked her to film explicit content on his video camera and get his name tattooed on her body. While Minka knew that it was not a good idea, she agreed to it somehow, as she desperately needed a place to live. She chose to get the tattoo done on the “side of her pubic mound” so that it could be hidden.

She later discovered that she was pregnant at 17. Her mother returned to New Mexico after finding out and made an appointment at Planned Parenthood, where Minka began to cry, as it was not something that she wanted. While her mother suggested that they could raise the baby together, she instead went ahead with an aboration, as she stated:

“That was it. In that moment, I knew the right choice. Raising a child with my mother would only continue this family trauma, another cycle added to so many generations of pain. Hadn’t there been enough damage already?”

Her mother ultimately passed away from colon cancer in 2008, at 51 years old.

Kelly’s Tell Me Everything will hit the bookshelves on May 2, 2023.