Liza Minnelli Reveals Troubling Childhood and Betrayal

has shared heartbreaking details of her upbringing with mother Judy Garland - before describing how she once found her husband in bed with another man.

In an extract from her first ever memoir called Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!, the actress, 79, spared no details of her colourful life. 

In the book she describes how Judy - who died at the age of 47 in 1969 - was 'poisoned with uppers and downers' as a child and 'spent millions of dollars' on rehab units. 

Liza told how despite her struggles her mother 'loved her passionately' and Liza loved her back 'just as much'.  

In the extract shared in The Sunday Times she penned: 'They [the press] said she was a bad mother, that she drank too much, took too many pills and ignored her family.

'Mama spent millions of dollars in rehab units and hospitals, praying that they could heal her. She had rounds of electroshock therapy. Nothing worked. It's no secret who the culprits were. 

'Industry executives - and, I'm told, my grandmother - had poisoned her with uppers and downers since she was a child star.'

She described how by the age of 13 she was her mother's 'caretaker' as well as a 'nurse, doctor, pharmacologist and psychiatrist' and that she would give her drugs every day so that she could function. 

Liza told how the way Judy dealt with the hardships of life was with a 'clever quip, a pill and a drink'. 

Liza was born in 1946 to movie star Judy and director Vincente Minnelli, who became a couple while working on the classic film Meet Me In St. Louis.

Vincente Minnelli was the second of Judy's five husbands, in a rocky personal life buffeted by decades of addiction that led to her death.

In the book Liza describes how when her sister Lorna Luft was born in 1952 Judy tried to kill herself shortly after.

After doctors treated her Liza describes how the next morning 'mama was in a great mood' and behaved 'like nothing happened' which led Liza to think she was 'immortal'.   

In 1969, she was 

In her book Liza describes how she 'cried for eight days straight' and said that year was 'a time of unimaginable sadness and fateful change'. 

Out March 10, the memoir also including details of the time she walked in on her first husband Peter Allen having sex in their marital bed with a man.

She told how she struggled to process what she'd seen and felt 'fragile and afraid' after what happened.

However after Liza's forgiveness they remained happily married for another seven years. 

Her love life increasingly became what Andy Warhol famously ,' as she took up with Peter Sellers while legally married to Allen and engaged to Desi Arnaz Jr., the son of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

The 1970s and early 1980s proved to be the peak of her career, with gigs such as a sold-out run at Carnegie Hall and a brief but wildly hyped stint as Roxie Hart in the original Broadway production of Kander & Ebb's Chicago.

She acted with Robert De Niro in the 1977 Martin Scorsese film New York, New York, whose title song by Kander & Ebb has become an unofficial anthem for the city.

Liza and Scorsese began an affair, and he went on to direct her in the 1978 stage musical The Act, in which she was an inspiration to the young Meryl Streep.

Her second husband was Jack Haley Jr. - the son of the actor who played the Tin Man alongside Judy in The Wizard Of Oz - and the third was sculptor Mark Gero.

While married to Jack, Liza allegedly conducted overlapping affairs with Scorsese and Mikhail Baryshnikov, according to her friend Andy Warhol's diaries.