Minka Kelly's tell-all reveals she grew up going to L.A.'s Crazy Girls

Minka Kelly reveals she grew up going to L.A.’s Crazy Girls while her mom performed

Minka Kelly poses in a colorful dress in front of shimmering lights that dangle from the ceiling.

April 14, 2023 2:26 PM PT

In Minka Kelly’s forthcoming memoir “Tell Me Everything,” the “Friday Night Lights” actor reveals a chaotic upbringing, toxic romances and her path to forgiveness.

Kelly spoke with People ahead of the release of her memoir “Tell Me Everything,” and opened up about her complicated relationship with her mother, Maureen Dumont Kelly.

Growing up in Los Angeles, Kelly’s mom danced at Crazy Girls, a local topless bar that opened in 1983. Motley Crüe’s infamous “Girls, Girls, Girls” video was shot at the dance club known for mixing rock ‘n’ roll shows with exotic pole routines. Struggling to make ends meet and unable to afford a babysitter, Kelly’s mom “Mo” had to take her to work with her.

“If she made a lot of money that night, we’d go grocery shopping at 2 a.m.,” Kelly, 42, told People. “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.”

Living in poverty and struggling with addiction and domestic violence, Mo missed rent payments and the two had to stay in the storage shed of an apartment complex.

“I spent a lot of my youth wishing my mom was something she wasn’t, wishing she was like the other moms,” the actor told People. “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.”

“Tell Me Everything” opens with Kelly revealing that at 17, she performed in peep shows at an Albuquerque adult-video store, desperate to support herself when her mother would skip town for weeks or months at a time.

“I started with the scariest part,” she told the outlet. “The part that I carried the most shame about, the part that I felt the most embarrassed of, the part that I hid my whole life, and the part that I’ve had people make me feel bad about. And I felt like that was just where I had to be the most brave.”

In her mother’s absence, Kelly says she was forced to move in with her abusive high school boyfriend, who coerced her into filming a sex tape. She became pregnant, and when Mo returned and offered to help her raise the baby, she imagined bringing a child into the world she’d been brought into, sans the financial and emotional stability she knew she needed to raise a child.

Adamant she wouldn’t continue the cycle of family trauma and pain, she opted for an abortion and returned to L.A., hoping to connect with her dad Rick Dufay, a former Aerosmith guitarist.

She worked as a receptionist, went to school to become a scrub nurse and modeled before landing her breakout role in 2006 on the NBC drama “Friday Night Lights.”

Ignoring the advice from “Friday Night Lights” director Peter Berg, Kelly became embroiled in a tumultuous on-again-off-again romance with her co-star Taylor Kitsch, which led to on-set tension and strained relationships with her castmates.

Around the same time, Kelly learned her mom had been diagnosed with colon cancer and given two years to live. She moved Mo to Texas where she was shooting “Friday Night Lights” and under the guidance of a therapist, began to confront her mother about her childhood.

“I saw her start to crumble in shame and regret and pain when she was already in so much of all of those things, and I just immediately thought, ‘I don’t need to do this to her,’” Kelly continued. “I only need to forgive her and love her. She’s already broken. What is the point of pouring salt on the wound? I’m fine. I just want to take care of her right now.”

Kelly cared for Mo until she died in a hospice facility in Albuquerque at 51. Kelly said she was there, holding her mom as she went.

“Tell Me Everything” hits bookshop shelves May 2.