Latest news with #IoneSkye
News.com.au
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
‘You'll never guess who'll be offended': Ione Skye on what she learned from sharing her Hollywood stories in a tell-all book
She led a wild-child life at the centre of Hollywood's 1990s celebrity storm, then this year published a no-holds-barred memoir, Say Everything. Now actress IONE SKYE, married to Australian musician Ben Lee, reveals what she has learned from sharing her story. I had just moved to Sydney when I got the book deal. I retreated to my 'office' to write – my bed. What surprised me most was how much I loved the work itself. I had time. I had space. I let myself fall in. I'd set the mood with music, then reach into memory and write about my past, shaped by the strange comfort of this new bed, in a new room, in a new Sydney life I was slowly coming to inhabit. Somewhere between the old and the new, I found myself again. And I found a new me. Some of these stories I'd been writing since I was a kid, especially my early teens – when films, music, and my older brothers' fascinating friends began to seep into my consciousness. Of course, I knew it was not the usual teen experience for my first crushes to be on actors I actually knew like Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix – or that my first real relationship was with an older, drug-addicted singer from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I understood that what made my life extraordinary was why people were interested in my story. Yes, I was technically what is now called a 'nepo baby' with a house that sometimes had famous people in and out of the front door. But despite all this I still had the big feelings of a poetic shy kid and then the desires of a hot-blooded high-schooler. I always believed there was something universal in my story, about the experience of young women growing up everywhere. The idea of writing my memoir thrilled me. I like to delight people and shock people. I am a needy entertainer at the end of the day. I like attention. I like being adored. But I can never quite sit still with the idea that someone might not – which was an inconvenient contradiction when I started to write a memoir. How to deal with my aching need to make everyone happy? Might it even hurt some people? My editor told me: 'You'll never guess who'll be offended by your memoir – or what will set them off.' She was right. The moment an early chapter mysteriously popped up on Page Six, I got an email from a once-beloved relative-by-marriage. I was shaken reading the rough message they sent, full of condescension and scolding. They insisted the whole project was 'beneath' me. I was irate. I had believed they were in the small group of my closest friends and family who really knew me, knew I would write a great memoir. I tried to explain. Didn't my old mentor know me at all? I'd counted them among the few who truly understood my sensibility – and my kindness. I tried to reassure them, but they wouldn't budge. They were convinced I could produce nothing but something tawdry – nothing more. Instead of letting their doubt eat at me, my anger became a kind of fuel – a steady, stubborn motivation. I kept writing. I brought my Mom into my writing process early-ish, hoping that including her in the process would soften any blows that might come her way. 'Don't give me any creative notes,' I said, careful to protect the fragile nature of creating. 'But please let me know if anything I've included is off the table,' Mom finished the book close to the last edit. 'I love it,' she said. She was gushing. It was good. I felt it was – and that helped digest any hard parts. I'm not sure where I found the conviction that my way of seeing the world had value, if only to myself and the friends who really got me. We were amused by one another's stories we told over dinners, or as we sunk together on couches, or on hikes in the Hollywood Hills. What caught me completely off guard was the wave of love and support that has followed the book's release. People loved it. Friends, strangers, even people I have always admired and lost touch with. Winona Ryder, Evan Rachel Wood and Molly Ringwald all wrote to say they related to the book and felt seen by it. That made me genuinely happy, because they weren't just impressed. They felt more open, less alone, a little high on shared memories and experiences. I didn't expect the memoir to be one of the most profound experiences of my life. Flea told me it would be. Griffin Dunne too. Like parents talking to someone about to become a parent: 'You can't know. Not yet. Just wait.' They were right. It cracked me open in ways I didn't anticipate. It changed something fundamental in me. A friend told me, 'You wrote the book of our generation.' A ridiculously overblown compliment, obviously. What mattered wasn't whether the statement was objectively true. What mattered was that I had done the thing. I had summoned the nerve. I had gotten to a place in my life where I could handle what writing a memoir might kick up. I could even hold the possibility that it might not be good. That it might fail. And I did it anyway.
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
More enjoyable sex, less enjoyable sleep. Ione Skye, 54, gets candid about intimacy, insecurities and menopause.
Gen-X it girl Ione Skye starred in River's Edge with Keanu Reeves, Say Anything with John Cusack and Wayne's World with Mike Myers and Dana Carvey. At just 16, she dated Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and married, cheated on and divorced the Beastie Boys' Adam Horowitz. For so much of her life, much of which has been covered by tabloids and chronicled in pop culture history has been notable for the men — and women — she's dated. But at 54, with the release of her memoir Say Everything, she's writing the story and taking center stage. So why tell all (and tell all she does) now? 'It's just that getting older, life doesn't get easier. But I feel I can handle getting through things a little better with the wisdom of age,' she tells Yahoo Life. With age comes wisdom, yes, but also new challenges and changes. Here she shares her refreshing thoughts on body image, exercise, menopause and more. Why was it the right time for you to write and release this book? I always love sharing myself with my close friends and family and just have that desire to be known, like all of us. But at this point, I felt I could trust myself to share and not overshare, believe it or not, even though it is unapologetically honest and disarming. It felt like there was a lot of interest in my life and I wanted to let people know who I am and share my experience. As I get older, I feel I can kind of take care of myself through things emotionally — ride the ups and downs and still stick with myself. When I was younger, I don't know if I would have had the same mind to edit parts. The older I get, the more I feel like life is just as hard in some ways, but this, too, shall pass. You touch on different sources of insecurity in your writing — your body being one of them. Has that changed as you've gotten older? The pressure I had put on myself to look like a friggin' model is insane. As I get older, I'm grateful when my body works. I'm always going to have that mind where I put pressure on myself thinking my stomach looks big in a picture or whatever it is. But I just appreciate superficially the parts of my body that I do like. In the book I write a list about the parts I like versus the parts I don't like, which is not a healthy thing. But also, it is, in the sense that I'm focusing on the good things. I'm just trying to remember all the healthy things that really matter. What does exercise look like for you in your 50s? I struggle with that and always have. As a little kid, I didn't like sports at first because I hated the feeling of competition. When it was light and just fun, it was great. I liked it when I could forget that I was exercising. It's about finding the thing that I feel good doing so I'm still doing something because I realize I have to and it makes me feel better, of course. But I'm inconsistent. Now I'm doing Pilates for just stretching. I'm not in a class — I found a place where you go on your own machine because I feel a lot of pressure in class sometimes. I'm 54 and most women in classes I've gone to were up to their 30s or 40s. So I'm a little older, they're seemingly having a much easier time and I get frustrated with myself that I don't have the same endurance. I was never highly athletic, but I'm giving myself a break. I don't want to push myself anymore as long as I'm doing something. Just being very gentle and taking it slow. How has your body evolved with aging? I'm getting older, my tummy is getting bigger and I'm gaining a little weight as I'm menopausal. Maybe that'll even out, but again, I'm giving myself grace for the changes of my body. As long as I'm being healthy and trying to be mobile and keep fit, that's more important than just worrying too much about what I look like in clothes. What has menopause been like for you otherwise? It's hard getting older. I guess you hear about that whole feeling of being invisible and all of that. I just didn't expect the anxiety and the mood changes. Obviously, your hormones are different, so all of a sudden I've got more anxiety. The part that's the hardest for me isn't even the hot flashes because I'm taking estrogen and that helps. It's the sleeplessness that's just the worst. I look at my 23-year-old and my teenager and I'm like, 'Oh, I loved when I was younger and could just sleep.' It's really good that more people are talking about it. I can't believe my mom didn't. I asked my mom about her experience and she's like, 'Oh, I don't remember. I just remember feeling sort of sad that I wouldn't be able to have a baby anymore.' And I'm like, 'That's it?' It's getting better. But I still feel sexy and beautiful. Intimacy and sexuality were a big part of the book. What does that look like for you today? It's been this whole process of … having sex for myself. I thankfully never had any nightmarish experiences, but I was still doing it a lot without really being in my body or knowing what I wanted. It felt almost like an extension of being creative with somebody I was attracted to and I admired. But I was very unable to enjoy it or I felt insecure about my body. Now that I'm in this marriage, I feel so safe. I can really check in with myself and do it for myself. I've turned it more into like, this is something good for me to do, which sounds completely unsexy, but it isn't. I remind myself that this is for you, this is for your sexual health and to connect with yourself and with your husband. It's such a long road and it's still going. Tell me about your beauty routine. I feel like I've finally learned how to do my makeup properly. It's taken me a long time. I was naturally pretty and I didn't have a mom who encouraged me to get gussied up or to put on a face. So I just kind of went with it and brushed my hair, put on some cool clothes. I've always had rosacea, so I used to lean toward a natural look and products just because I was trying to avoid perfumes and stuff that would make my skin turn bright red. I have dry skin too, so just whatever I'm doing, I use a lot of moisturizer. I've never stuck to a routine, but I'm more and more open to learning about it these days, especially having daughters. They have like 20-step skincare routines. I'm going to try to do more facials because I think they do brighten up your skin. So I want to try to do a facial every three months or something if I can. You wrote about always feeling older than you were when you were a teenager, as a result of being in Hollywood. What age do you feel now? I feel a lot of different ages for different parts of me. I mean, sometimes I feel like a kid when I'm feeling emotional in a certain way. But I would say maybe early 40s, if I was going to land on like a more mature adult age.
South China Morning Post
11-03-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
She was turned down by Keanu Reeves. 80s teen actress Ione Skye recalls a steamy encounter
Professionally known as the cool-girl star of Say Anything and other 1980s teen films, Ione Skye was also famous for her tumultuous trysts and relationships with famous men, from Red Hot Chili Peppers front man Anthony Kiedis to actor John Cusack, and for getting swept up in the dark side of Hollywood. Advertisement Fortunately, it does not sound like there was anything too dark about Skye's friendship with Keanu Reeves , as she has revealed in her new, tell-all memoir, Say Everything. However, she admitted that the friendship began with her 'stalking' the famously easy-going A-list actor while they worked together on her first movie, River's Edge, a 1986 crime drama. During the film shoot, she also described how their friendship reached an important understanding after she unsuccessfully tried to seduce him. Keanu Reeves and Ione Skye in a still from River's Edge. 'Even the way he'd rejected me was charming,' Skye wrote, according to entertainment magazine Entertainment Weekly.
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Ione Skye, 54, Reveals She Slept with Costar John Cusack — and Other Juicy Revelations from Her Memoir (Exclusive)
Actress Ione Skye, 51, is an open book in her debut memoir Say Everything. (Out March 4). The delightfully juicy tome details everything from the Say Anything star's bohemian childhood, her fraught relationship with her father, 'Mellow Yellow' singer Donovan and tons of famous friends like River Phoenix, Keanu Reeves, Sofia Coppola, Madonna and her first husband, Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz. "I'm a little nervous," Skye tells PEOPLE of name-checking so many celebs in the book. But she also says that at her age, she's found peace with telling the truth about her life and career. "I think as you get older, you feel freer just taking chances creatively and not worrying so much about everybody being happy," she says. "Or worrying about looking like a fool." "I definitely don't want to hurt anyone. But some people I named in the book have read it, and luckily everyone has loved it." One of those readers? Her Say Anything costar John Cusack. Skye had always maintained that while they had crushes on each other during filming, they never hooked up on set. In the book, she divulges that they eventually did sleep together, albeit years later. "I had to get it out of my system," she writes in the book, of getting together with him after her divorce from her first husband, Adam Horovitz. Related: Kathleen Hanna's Rebel Girl Shares Love Story with Beastie Boys' Ad-Rock — Get a Sneak Peek Here (Exclusive) She says she allowed Cusack to read a draft of her memoir, and afterward, he texted her: "You made the experience sound so meh! It wasn't 'meh' for me," he told her. "I was like, I'm telling a story, and it was more about how all of our chemistry was in our working together and stimulating each other's minds, not sleeping together!" Skye says, adding with a laugh, "I felt a little bad, but, oh well." Skye, who began acting at age 16, also reveals other crushes she had on costars, including her longtime friend River Phoenix, with whom she starred in 1988's A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon. "River ended up being a brother to me, but I remember at the time thinking, 'Oh I'm in love with him!' I couldn't wait to do my kissing scene with him. He was just delicious.'" Related: Ione Skye Shares Final Text Exchange with Matthew Perry Days Before His Death: 'Love This Guy' She also goes into her tumultuous relationship with rocker Anthony Kiedis, who she dated when she was 16 and he was 24 and struggling with a heroin addiction. Skye also had an abortion after getting pregnant by him in her late teens. "I'm not in touch with him," she admits, admitting that she's a little nervous over what he'll think of the book. Skye also opens up about meeting and falling for Horovitz when she was 20, and what it was like being part of the "It Couple" of the early '90s. The duo got married in 1992, but during their union, Skye discovered her bisexuality and entered into a series of affairs, including one with model Jenny Shimizu, the author reveals. They eventually divorced in 2000, and Horovitz later married Bikini Kill singer Kathleen Hanna. Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. "I wrote to Adam," Skye says, of letting him know he'd be in the book. "He's private, but also such a big part of my story so he couldn't not be in it." One person who she knows won't have any issue with the book is her husband of 15 years, Aussie rocker Ben Lee. (The two share daughter Goldie, 15, and Skye is mom to daughter Kate, 24, with her ex David Netto.) Related: A Wedding in India for Actress Ione Skye "My husband, yeah, he knew everything," Skye says of Lee, 46. "I mean, he's kind of amazing. I don't think anything ruffled his feathers except that I spent so much time ruminating on a lot of the early chapters, and then by the time I got to the end and his chapters, I was sort of rushing through it. And he was like, wait a minute, wait a minute. I've been by your side this whole time and you can't rush through my part!" Jokes and first-time author jitters aside, Skye just hopes that people will have as much fun reading her story as she did writing it. "It's almost like motherhood, in that you know it's going to be a huge experience, but you don't know how big until you get there," she says of the three-year undertaking. "But it's one of my favorite projects I've ever done. I thought it would be kind of just annoying and difficult, but I ended up loving it. And yes, I do care about what others will think. But I also have the feeling that everything will be okay." Say Everything is available now, wherever books are sold. Read the original article on People
New York Times
27-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Ione Skye Was an Enigma in Her 1990s Heyday. Now She'd Like a Word.
When Ione Skye was in middle school in the early 1980s, a group of popular, mean girls she calls 'the Aprils' brought her — shy, bookish, not yet famous — into their intimidating fold. She was surprised they even knew her name. 'Part of me wanted to punch the girls' smug faces,' she writes in her memoir 'Say Everything,' due out from Gallery Books on March 4. Another part of her, though, 'burned with excitement.' Those preteen memories, which she wrote down, felt important. Cinematic, even. 'My own story captured my imagination,' Skye told me during a video interview from Los Angeles. 'I had a big ego, I guess.' For almost 40 years, since Skye made her film debut at 15 alongside Keanu Reeves, Crispin Glover and Dennis Hopper in the teen crime drama 'River's Edge,' her name has been associated with powerful people, mostly men. There's her father, the Scottish folk singer Donovan, whose early abandonment of Skye, her mother and brother, connects her experiences from 'Girlhood,' as the first section of the book is called, to 'Womanhood,' the second. There's her relationship with the Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis, which started when she was 16. There's her marriage to Adam Horovitz, better known as Ad-Rock from the Beastie Boys, which ended in divorce after Skye ('I was a serial cheater,' she writes) rediscovered her bisexuality and embarked on a series of affairs with women, including Jenny Shimizu, Ingrid Casares and Alice Temple. She's now a mother of two and has been married to Ben Lee, a musician, since 2008. They live in Los Angeles but just spent the last year in Sydney. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
