In her upcoming autobiography Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me, set for release on May 7, Academy Award-winning actress Whoopi Goldberg shares deeply personal stories about her childhood, family, and the challenges of motherhood. The Sister Act star reveals how her frequent absences due to her demanding acting career took a toll on her relationship with her only daughter, Alex Martin.
Goldberg recalls the shock she felt when she learned her teenage daughter was pregnant. “Years later, Alexandrea 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,” Goldberg writes. “I thought she was getting revenge on me for being gone so much. I got it.” Alex became pregnant at 15, making Goldberg, then in her 30s, a young grandmother.
According to The US Sun, Goldberg worried that her daughter’s early pregnancy would cause her to miss out on typical teenage experiences. Having become a young mother herself at 18, Goldberg didn’t want her daughter to face similar struggles. She had Alex with her first husband, Alvin Martin, who had been her drug counselor during her teenage years after she developed a heroin addiction in New York.
In a 2009 interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Goldberg opened up about her difficult past: “I was young, homeless, and addicted to heroin. I dropped out of high school and into drugs. Simple as that. I was a child of the ’60s so I ingested as many mind-altering substances as I could.” She later got clean and pursued acting.
Goldberg’s marriage to Martin lasted from 1973 to 1979, and she admits in her memoir that she was the one to end the marriage, realizing it wasn’t the right decision for her. She explained that Martin didn’t support her dream of acting, leading her to move back in with her mother.
While Goldberg struggled with being a single parent, she expressed her deep love for her daughter, even acknowledging that Alex resented her for being away so often. She recalls incidents where Alex became upset when fans interrupted family moments or dinners for autographs or photos.
Despite the challenges, Goldberg says their relationship has grown stronger over time. Alex gave birth to her first child, Amara, on November 13, 1989, with her grandmother by her side. Though Goldberg missed the birth, her daughter eventually forgave her, and they’ve since become closer. In her memoir, Goldberg also shares that she had only one child because she found childbirth too painful, comparing it to “shoving a ninety-two-inch TV screen through a tiny hole.”