Actress Demi Moore, a Roswell native, talks about life, love and money

 Actress Demi Moore’s new autobiography, “Inside Out,” begins with story of her early years growing up in Roswell, New Mexico. A volatile, dysfunctional couple, Moore’s parents moved the family often, to places as far from New Mexico as Pennsylvania and California, leaving a trail of unpaid debts in their wake. It was usual for Demi and younger brother Morgan to enroll at two or three different schools during a single school year.

“My coping mechanism was to go into every new situation and immediately start operating like a detective: How does it work here? What are people into? Who are my potential allies? What should I be afraid of? Who holds power? And, of course, the big one: How can I fit in?” Moore says. “I would try to crack the code, figure out what I had to do, and master it. These skills would become essential later on.”

Due to her parents’ gambling and use of drugs and alcohol, Moore took care of herself, her brother, and sometimes even her parents from an early age. “I was only thirteen . . . when I was regularly assigned to run errands in the family car,” writes Moore. If caught, Moore’s mother instructed her to say she had taken the car without her parents’ permission. “It was convenient for my parents, and it was one more way of seeing what they could get away with.”

Moore reveals the unpleasant, frightening, and criminal side of life she was exposed to as a child, which she says has taken her decades to be able to express. “I was an easy mark for a predator,” she admits, “and I had nobody to protect me.” While she went on to star in many films, one in particular has some jarring similarities to her youth; “An Indecent Proposal” tells the story of a husband who agrees to the dubious trade his wife (Moore’s character) for a large sum of money. Moore makes the startling and painful admission that her own mother gave a stranger access to the teenage Demi for a few hundred dollars. No wonder she left home at 16.

But walking out didn’t allow complete escape from her family’s misery; before she turned 18, her father had died of alcohol poisoning. Moore soon married a guitarist she’d met earlier that year. She admits the wedding was mainly a distraction from her feelings about her father’s death.

Moore moved to New York City when she was selected for some photo shoots and interviews and landed a role on the soap opera “General Hospital.” She experienced the heady feeling of finally being in control of her own destiny by making her own money. “In many ways,” writes Moore, “’General Hospital’ was like another new school I had to figure out, but the stakes were much higher.” Moore followed in the steps of her parents and began drinking to help her overcome feelings of self-doubt. After a couple of public embarrassments caused by her drinking, Moore realized “alcohol was moving me back to where I came from instead of forward into the future I envisioned for myself. I quit drinking, cold turkey.”

There are many more fascinating details to learn as Moore allows readers an intimate look into her personal life, her career, her relationships, her children, and the work of unlearning the dysfunctional family dynamics of her childhood. Her book is available at Carlsbad Public Library in both print and e-book formats.