Liza Minnelli has bared her soul about her four failed marriages, her tempestuous life with her superstar mother Judy Garland and her humiliating Oscars appearance with Lady Gaga in her bombshell new memoir Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!.
The nearly 80-year-old legend of stage and screen previously maintained she would never publish an autobiography, saying: 'Tell it when I'm gone!'
However, she changed her mind after being infuriated by the inaccurate depictions of Garland's life and her own, so she has put her story between hard covers with the help of her longtime close friend, song-and-dance man Michael Feinstein.
In an explosive excerpt of the book, she looked back on her childhood experience of helping her pill-addicted mother refresh her supply of prescription drugs.
'At 13, I was my mother’s caretaker - a nurse, doctor, pharmacologist, and psychiatrist rolled into one,' she wrote, per People. 'I lost count of the times I called doctors to say she’d run out of pills. I’d say: “I’m a kid! Please fill my mama’s prescription!"'
Out March 10, the memoir ranges across her life and career, including the time she walked in on her first husband Peter Allen having sex in their marital bed with a man.
Liza Minnelli has bared her soul about her four failed marriages and her tempestuous life with her superstar mother Judy Garland in her new memoir; pictured 2024
Minnelli decided to write the book after being infuriated by the inaccurate depictions of her own life and that of her late mother, whom she is pictured with in 1965
She was born in 1946 to movie star Judy Garland 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 Garland's five husbands, in a rocky personal life buffeted by decades of addiction that led to her death.
Liza often remarks that she received her 'dreams' from her father and her 'drive' from her mother during her upbringing in showbiz.
She accompanied her father to the sets of his films and joined her mother on concert tours, changing schools constantly and living in hotels along with her younger siblings Lorna and Joey Luft, whom Garland had by her third husband Sid Luft.
'I’ll never forget the day she sat us down and gave Lorna and me a choice; Joey was less than 1 year old,' Minnelli recalls in a passage of her new book.
'We could stay in school in Los Angeles. Or we could come on the road with her. We’d be in and out of different hotels, schools (I’d eventually attend 22 of them), and cities. “When do we leave?” we answered in unison.'
Looking back on that period, Minnelli has joked elsewhere that she would have starved if she had not learned how to order room service by herself as a child.
As she grew older, she became a protector of sorts for Garland, helping shield her from the public scrutiny aimed at her personal demons.
In an explosive excerpt of the book, out March 10, she looked back on her childhood experience of helping her pill-addicted mother refill her supply of prescription drugs; pictured 1963
In the pages of her book, she will look back on the experience of being raised in Hollywood by Judy and the renowned director Vincente Minnelli; Judy and Liza pictured in 1963
Liza was born in 1946 to movie star Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli, after the couple met working on the classic film Meet Me In St. Louis; Judy and Liza pictured 1947
In her late teens, Minnelli struck out to New York alone to pursue a career as a Broadway star, never taking money from her parents again.
However she continued to work alongside her mother, including with a concert run at the iconic London Palladium in 1963 when Minnelli was 18.
'After my first song [on opening night] I heard her shout: “Yeah, baby! Go get ’em!”' Minnelli wrote in the book. 'After the second song, another “Yeah!” but not quite as strong. By the third song, let’s just say she was losing enthusiasm. I heard her whispering to our producer, Harold Davison: “Harold, get her off my f***ing stage!”
'I just kept singing to wild applause as Mama fumed. I had a stunning realization. I had begun the night as Mama’s daughter. Now, I was onstage with Judy Garland.'
She got her big break in the 1965 musical Flora, The Red Menace, with songs by Fred Ebb and John Kander, a duo who became her lifelong friends and collaborators.
Although the show flopped commercially, Minnelli won a Tony Award for best leading actress - becoming, at age 19, the youngest woman ever to do so.
In 1967 she embarked on her first failed marriage, which was to gay Australian singer Peter Allen, whom she stayed friends with until he succumbed to AIDS in 1992.
In the memoir, she wrote about an afternoon during their marriage and was 'returning early from an indulgent shopping spree, I walked into our apartment and found Peter having passionate sex. With a man. In our bed!'
Minnelli's first husband was the gay Australian singer Peter Allen, whom she stayed friends with until he died of AIDS in 1992; the onetime couple are pictured at their wedding in 1967
Her second husband was Jack Haley Jr. - whose father played the Tin Man alongside Judy in The Wizard Of Oz - and the third was sculptor Mark Gero; Minnelli and Gero pictured in 1982
Her final marriage was to Michael Jackson's childhood friend David Gest, a bizarre spectacle that turned instantly into a media circus; pictured 2002
She added: ''As the other gentleman quickly dressed and disappeared, I felt fragile and afraid. Too emotionally frozen to vent my anger and pain. Then, Peter walked up to me and held me tightly. We both began crying. Racking sobs. He told me for the first time: “Liza, I love you more than anyone in the world...and I’m gay.”
Allen, she noted, 'apologized over and over, telling me that, alongside our active and very fulfilling sexual life, he was also attracted to men.'
Meanwhile her career went from strength to strength, as she earned her first Oscar nomination for the 1969 film The Sterile Cuckoo.
She became an internationally touring concert act, mixing American show tunes with numbers by her mentor Charles Aznavour, the 'French Frank Sinatra.'
Minnelli described Charles as 'the biggest influence on my personal and professional life,' while he said they were 'more than friends and less than lovers,' via INA.
In 1969, she was rocked by Garland's death in London at 47 of what the authorities declared an 'incautious self-overdosage' of sleeping pills.
'I cried for eight straight days. Stress and tension overwhelmed me. I was reeling, and a doctor prescribed Valium to help me relax just before the funeral,' Minnelli shared in another one of the newly released excerpts of the book.
'What began as a one-day blessing soon turned into a habit, then a full-blown case of addiction in the years ahead. It was a final gift, a genetic inheritance from Mama I could not escape,' recalled the Arrested Development star.
She will also reflect on her glittering career, including her Oscar-winning performance in Cabaret, for which she is pictured in a publicity still
Cabaret starred Minnelli as a nightclub singer in Weimar Berlin, giddily indifferent to the rising menace of the Nazis; she is pictured in the film with her co-star Michael York
Based on a Broadway show with a score by Kander & Ebb, the film starred her as a nightclub singer in Weimar Berlin, giddily indifferent to the rising menace of the Nazis.
Minnelli won an Oscar for Cabaret with her father by her side - and when her name was called, he shrieked with joy so loudly that he gave her tinnitus.
She revealed in the book, however, that she 'didn’t even bother writing an acceptance speech' because she was so certain Diana Ross would win for her turn as Billie Holiday in the acclaimed biopic Lady Sings the Blues.
In the same year that Cabaret was released, Minnelli starred in the Emmy-winning TV concert Liza with a Z, which reunited her with Kander, Ebb and Fosse.
'Overnight, it seemed, I’d gone from being an original “nepo baby” to Sally Bowles — a hot mess of ambition, lovable quirks, crazy sex, and selfish manipulation,' she observed in an extract of the memoir.
'I had “trouble” stamped all over me, because of the intensity I brought to everything. The world knew me as LIZA! For the first time in my life, I wondered what that really meant, especially through the haze of substances. Benzodiazepines. Barbiturates. Amphetamines. Alcohol. Cocaine.'
Her love life increasingly became what Andy Warhol famously described in his diaries as 'complicated,' 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.
She starred opposite Robert De Niro in the Martin Scorsese film New York, New York, whose title song by Kander & Ebb has become an unofficial anthem for the city
In 1981, she was the leading lady of the smash hit comedy film Arthur, starring Dudley Moore as a lovably drunken playboy and John Gielgud as his acerbic butler
'While writing this book, Michael [Feinstein] helped me drum up the courage to call Desi for the first time in years,' she has now shared. 'I started to apologize for the pain I had caused him so long ago. But Desi stopped me. “Liza,” he said, “all I remember is the love. Please let everything else go. I have.” Talk about a gentleman.'
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.
Minnelli 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.
'Truth be told, our love affair had more layers than a lasagna. We were both Italian. Passionate. Intense. Committed to our craft. We both had volcanic tempers,' Minnelli explained in the upcoming memoir.
'He was a diabolically handsome man who shared my love for film. I was a director’s daughter. With Marty’s guidance, however unorthodox, I did some of my finest work. I held back for once in my life. Me!'
In 1981, she was the leading lady of the smash hit comedy film Arthur, starring Dudley Moore as a lovably drunken playboy and John Gielgud as his acerbic butler.
Minnelli won an Oscar for Cabaret with her father by her side - and when her name was called, he shrieked with joy so loudly that he gave her tinnitus; pictured accepting her Academy Award
As a young woman, Minnelli initially steered clear of alcohol and drugs, having witnessed her mother's fatal descent into addiction; Minnelli and Garland pictured in 1965
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, Minnelli allegedly conducted overlapping affairs with Scorsese and Mikhail Baryshnikov, according to her friend Andy Warhol's diaries.
She repeatedly tried to have children, telling an interviewer: 'I desperately want a family,' but suffered three miscarriages and ultimately never became a mother.
In the memoir, she shatteringly looked back on the experience of delivering a stillborn baby at five months pregnant during her marriage to Gero.
'I prayed every day that our child would survive, but it was not to be. I was rushed to a hospital in Reno, Nevada, where I went through the wrenching experience of a stillbirth,' she revealed. 'To this day, I can’t talk about these events without sadness and anxiety. The inability to become a mother is a tragedy I will never get over.'
Meanwhile, by the late 1970s, her social life had become increasingly rocked by a galloping drug problem that came to help define her image.
As a young woman, Liza initially steered clear of alcohol and drugs, having witnessed her mother's fatal descent into addiction.
However in the 1970s she plunged into a maelstrom of hedonistic excess, indulging in substances ranging from alcohol to cocaine to Quaaludes.
Lady Gaga's cloying interactions with Minnelli at the 2022 Oscars - whispering: 'I got you' to her in an aside that was caught on the mic - fueled conjecture about the latter's health
Minnelli called Charles Aznavour 'the biggest influence on my personal and professional life,' while he said they were 'more than friends and less than lovers'; they are pictured in 1973
Liza's concert performances remained a mainstay of her career through the decades; pictured alongside Tony Bennett in a CBS TV special in 1995
Ultimately, she was able to wrench herself out of her spiral, undergoing rehab at the Betty Ford Clinic and entering Alcoholics Anonymous.
Her first stay at a treatment center came in 1984 at the behest of her sister Lorna Luft, and when she checked in and the 'aides asked if I took any medications, I said: “Only a few, on weekends.” The intake guys didn’t bat an eye.'
'I’d had a front-row seat to Mama’s demons. But I was convinced I was different,' Minnelli explained in her autobiography. 'I used cocaine, but so did everybody else. Baby, I had it all under control. What bulls***.'
She left rehab but wound up back there in a year, this time after her longtime family friend Elizabeth Taylor prevailed upon her to resume treatment.
Minnelli has now told the public: 'I’ll never forget the urgency in her voice and her words: “Liza, this disease is going to kill you if you don’t do the right thing,” she said. “Please, no more lies. Look in the mirror and see what we all see. You look like hell, and you feel even worse. You’re not able to do this alone.”'
In 1994 she decamped from her longtime residence of New York to Los Angeles, where her social life became a glittering nexus of 1990s Hollywood.
'On any given Saturday night in my Los Angeles living room you might see Madonna, Tony Bennett, or Quentin Tarantino,' she wrote in the book.
'We gathered around my dining-room table, which shimmered under the weight of Elsa Peretti–designed sterling silver bowls from Tiffany & Co. piled high with my favorite food— Kentucky Fried Chicken. After schmoozing and dinner, I’d yell, “To the piano!” We’d all gather around my Steinway.'
She won a new generation of fans as Lucille Two, a cougar with a vertigo problem, on the beloved early-2000s sitcom Arrested Development; pictured on the show with Tony Hale
She added: 'I was nearing 50, facing the fact that my life was a crazy pendulum of intense highs and anxious lows. Pain was now a 24-7 reality. I felt excruciating throbs, stabs, and aches. OxyContin soon became my drug of choice for instant relief.'
Then in 2002 came her final marriage, to Michael Jackson's childhood friend David Gest, a bizarre spectacle that turned instantly into a media circus.
'I clearly wasn’t sober when I married this clown. Gest was a fast-talking, wheeler-dealer promoter who wore more makeup than I did. Boy, did he have a line: “Liza, you deserve to be the biggest star in the world,"' she dished in the book.
'Fast-forward to our $3.2 million wedding extravaganza on March 16, 2002. Michael Jackson was David’s best man. Elizabeth Taylor was my matron of honor. Politicians, movie stars, rock stars — you name it. Also highway robbery.'
She elaborated: 'I found out that the freebies Gest couldn’t wrangle from the hotel and celebrities, he charged to American Express. My American Express card!'
During their marriage, Minnelli accused Gest of controlling 'everything I ate, from morning until night. He controlled the people I saw and spoke to on the phone. He screened my calls. In truth, I was his prisoner.'
Their union dissolved into a rancorous and protracted divorce, in which he sued her for $10 million alleging spousal abuse but had his case dismissed.
Meanwhile her rollercoaster addictions cropped back up - to the point she once fell down in the street after getting drunk at a bar in Manhattan - and her decades of song and dance had begun to take a toll on her body.
Liza, who as a child often accompanied her mother on concert tours, is pictured with Judy and the latter's third husband Sid Luft in 1954
'From 1994 to 2015, I’d have surgery on both knees. Surgery to repair crushed discs in my lower back. Surgery to repair both wrists, after another fall. This was on top of two earlier hip replacements, plus two operations on my vocal cords,' she shared.
'Someone else would have hung up their Capezio shoes and headed for the nearest beach. But I sent out a different message in 2008, when I performed Liza’s at The Palace on Broadway. My voice might not have been what it was 20 years before. But Michael [Feinstein] convinced me it was stronger, deeper, and richer.'
Liza's at The Palace, a one-woman show dedicated to her impresario godmother Kay Thompson, was a thunderous success that netted her a Tony, after which she sang a highly-publicized cover of Single Ladies by Beyonce in Sex and the City 2.
Another rehab trip followed in 2015, after a morning in which she 'reached for my pills before breakfast' and 'realized that maybe my nine lives were up,' she wrote.
'I was not even remotely cautious about the medications I was taking, and the world knows what an incautious overdose did to our family years ago. I’d be damned if I let that happen to me now,' shared the But the World Goes 'Round songstress.
In the 1960s, she became an internationally touring concert act, mixing American show tunes with numbers by her mentor Charles Aznavour, the 'French Frank Sinatra'
'These days, if someone offers me a glass of champagne at a party, I thank them, and put it down without a sip. Medication is a different story. I still have lower back pain, and I do get anxious from time to time. But the drugs are now strictly controlled. And baby, there’s no going back.'
In 2022, Minnelli was mocked online for an embarrassing appearance at the Oscars when Lady Gaga rolled her onstage in a wheelchair to present best picture.
Gaga's cloying interactions with Minnelli - whispering: 'I got you' to her in an aside that was caught on the mic - fueled conjecture about the latter's health.
Feinstein later claimed Minnelli was 'forced' to go onstage in a wheelchair at the last minute, after first agreeing to appear in a director's chair for her 'back trouble.'
Minnelli was 'sabotaged' by the switch-up and came away feeling 'very disappointed,' Feinstein said on The Jess Cagle Show on SiriusXM.
Now she has offered her own account of the fiasco, saying she 'was inexplicably ordered — not even asked — to sit in a wheelchair or not appear at all. I was told it was because of my age, and for safety reasons, because I might slip out of the director’s chair, which was bullshit. I will not be treated this way, I said.'
She was 'heartbroken' by the turn events had taken, on top of which she 'was much lower down than I would have been in the director’s chair. Now I couldn’t easily read the teleprompter above me. How would you feel if you were wheeled out, against your will, to perform in front of a live audience, and unable to see clearly?'
Minnelli then scathingly recalled that 'when I stumbled over a few words, Gaga, who was at my side, didn’t miss a beat to play the kindhearted hero for all the world to see. “I got you,” she said, leaning down over me.'
Gaga approached her in her dressing room after the debacle to ask: 'Are you okay?' to which Minnelli replied simply: 'I'm a big fan,' having 'learned this lesson years ago from Mama and Papa. At a moment of high stress, you stay gracious.'
