Rose McGowan's new memoir depicts parade of horrors

Rose McGowan

BOSTON • Rose McGowan helped open the floodgates against Harvey Weinstein.

But her new memoir Brave also details other horrors long before she was sexually abused by the producer.

Some details of what the 44-year-old actress discloses - including allegations against Weinstein - have been discussed before, but seeing the anecdotes all in one place has a startling effect.

Her life starts looking like a parade of horrors. McGowan said she is on the other side of all that now, though, and finally in a good place. Here is a look at some of the revelations in the book, Brave.

She was born into a cult: Her parents were living in Italy with the Children Of God when she was born in 1973. Her early memories include being beaten by cult members and the day her father took a second wife.

After the group started advocating sexual relationships between adults and children, her father fled with his kids and second wife, leaving McGowan's mother to figure out her own escape.

She was a homeless runaway: Once her parents made their way back to the United States, she bounced between living with her father - an often cruel man - and her mother, who once had McGowan committed for being a drug addict.

McGowan escaped from that facility and became a teen runaway, living on the streets for a year before settling with her aunt in Seattle.

Her relationship with Marilyn Manson was quite lovely: Despite the press calling him a shock rocker, the singer was a sweet person and the pair had a pretty boring, domestic existence, she writes. They were an item from late 1997, got engaged the following year, but split up in 2000.

"When he wasn't creating electrifying music, Manson was painting watercolours of my Boston terriers while I was ordering glassware from Martha Stewart's online store," she writes.

The real story behind those tabloid claims of plastic surgery: McGowan became a target on sites such as Perez Hilton when her appearance seemed to change overnight.

Suddenly, the tabloids were claiming that she had gone under the knife. She said then the change was the result of a car crash that left her needing reconstructive surgery.

It turns out that was not true.

In 2007, when she was recuperating from an injury she suffered on the set of the movie, Planet Terror, she thought it was a good time to also fix a life-long sinus problem.

The operation went awry, with a hole in her skin below her right eye.

She needed reconstructive surgery, which left her eye looking slightly pinched, so she also had surgery on her left eye to keep things symmetrical.

"I told my publicists... and they said to say it was a car accident," McGowan writes. "Looking back, I don't know why it mattered, but I took that advice."

She refuses to name Weinstein: McGowan was one of the first stars to go public with allegations against him, but does not want to say his name. "By now, we all know the Monster's name, but I have made a choice not to use it," she writes.

"I refuse to have his name in my book." Instead, she refers to him as "the Studio Head", "the Monster" or "the Pig Monster".

WASHINGTON POST

•Brave is available at Books Kinokuniya at $31.13.

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on January 31, 2018, with the headline Rose McGowan's new memoir depicts parade of horrors. Subscribe