Whoopi Goldberg has admitted that she thinks her daughter got pregnant at such a young age in order to get ‘revenge’ on the Sister Act star for being away so much once her movie career took off.
Writing in her new memoir, Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother And Me, the 68-year-old reveals that daughter Alexandrea Martin, who is her only child, told her that she ‘wanted one person in her life who didn’t know who Whoopi Goldberg was.’
Whoopi, who was 19 when she gave birth in May 1974, has previously admitted that she chose her acting career over her daughter because she felt her shot at fame ‘would never happen again’ – and she elaborates on this further in her new book.
Confirming that it was her own mother, Emma Johnson, who was present in the delivery room when Alexandrea gave birth in 1989, Whoopi writes: ‘Years later, Alex told me that she thinks she got pregnant as a teenager because she wanted one person in her life who didn’t know who Whoopi Goldberg was.
Whoopi Goldberg has admitted that she thinks Alexandrea Martin got pregnant at such a young age in order to get ‘revenge’ on her
Whoopi, pictured here in 1986 with her second husband David Claessen and Alex, has previously said that she chose her career over her child
Whoopi and her daughter pictured at the MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles in 1991
‘I thought she was getting her revenge on me for being gone so much. I got it,’ Whoopi continues, before adding that when she initially asked her daughter if she was certain about keeping her baby, she replied: ‘”Yes I want to have this baby. And this baby will love me, and she won’t know you.”
‘Now to some that may sound harsh, but I understood,’ Whoopi says. ‘See, people would move my kid out of the way and not even realize they had done it. After a while, it really p**sed her off.’
Alexandrea was 11 years old when moviegoers got the chance to witness her talents in her first major film role in Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple, in which she played Celie Harris-Johnson.
Back in March, Whoopi opened up about choosing her career over Alex and told the panel on The View: ‘My kid came before my career, and I chose my career because I knew this would never happen again.
‘She didn’t always like it, but that is the process of being a parent – they’re not supposed to like everything you do.’
And last week on the ABC show, while discussing her new book with her cohosts, Whoopi compared leaving her daughter to when her own mother Emma left when she was just eight when she was sent to a psychiatric hospital in New York City.
‘I had to deal with this with my daughter, because when I got famous, I didn’t realize that I too was leaving her because she and I… were our own band, like me and my mother and my brother,’ she told the panel.
‘We were that, and so when she got really annoyed with me later in life, I said, “what is the problem?” And I realized, “oh my god, I did the same thing that my mother did,” except that it wasn’t my mother’s choice.
Whoopi opens up about her own childhood and the early days of her career in her new memoir Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, And Me
The Oscar winner and her daughter, pictured here in 1993, share a very close bond
Whoopi pictured with her daughter Alex and her two children, Mason and Jerzey, in 2006
Whoopi pictured in May 2008 with her granddaughter Amarah Skye Martin
‘I knew I was leaving, I knew why I was leaving, and tried to explain it which you can’t do to an eight-year-old because they don’t have… they only have eight years of life which means they maybe have four.’
Writing in her memoir, Whoopi recalls: ‘As an adult, Alex remembers me explaining to her as a child, why I often had to be away. She gets it now.
‘But as a kid, you’re not thinking about financial independence, security, or having some backup in the bank account. When you’re eight or nine, you just want your mom around.’
Alex is now mom to her three children – daughters Amara and Jerzey, and son Mason.
In March 2014, Whoopi became a great-grandmother when Amarah gave birth to a daughter named Charli Rose.