At age 16, Ione Skye began dating Red Hot Chili Peppers front man Anthony Kiedis, who was 24 and fresh out of rehab.
The chemistry was immediate, as they were “instantly full-blown, instantly enmeshed.” But it just as quickly turned toxic as the rocker continued to battle an addiction to heroin. The relationship started right when Skye landed her breakout role in the Cameron Crowe film “Say Anything.”
The actress, now 54, has written a memoir, “Say Everything,” in which she opens up about her love life and rise to stardom in Hollywood.
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Skye credited the 1989 cult classic for helping her cope with the doomed romance.
“I think doing ‘Say Anything’ was one of my saviors, and keeping contact with some of my friends,” she told Fox News Digital.
“It’s funny. You end up kind of hiding,” she reflected on being a teen, who found herself looking after an adult struggling.
“… I felt embarrassed that I was in this situation. I felt this instinct to not let people know how bad it was. . . . I was just a wreck at the time. I was so scared.”
“I think it rattled me for years,” the mother-of-two shared. “I . . . numbed out when I was with him. And when I was working, I would fall out and be happy again. I think that’s how I coped with it. I don’t know, I think I just knew enough to stay in contact with friends who really loved me.”
In the book, Skye recalls how her “falling for Anthony phase” was quickly replaced by her “saving for Anthony phase.”
Skye said she spent many lonely late nights driving and looking for him. She would visit his usual haunts, such as “the market where he bought bleach for his needles” and “that apartment . . . where his favorite dealer lived with his grandma.” When Kiedis was home from touring, Skye said she had anxiety attacks in the middle of the night.
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Skye shared that the need to save Kiedis became “an addiction in itself.” It took a while before she hit rock bottom.
“Finally, I realized, ‘I don’t need to take care of him, it’s not my job. I’m not a nurse,’” Skye told Fox News Digital. “I really had that moment where I [realized] I’m not a nurse. That was the thought that came to mind: This isn’t my job.”
“And then I just . . . snapped out of it,” she said. “But . . . I hid. I didn’t really cope with it very well. I just . . . didn’t let people know how bad it was. And then finally, I broke free.”
Skye stressed that both her mother, model Enid Karl, and her brother, actor Donovan Leitch, didn’t approve of the relationship. Skye wrote that “the tension between my brother and my boyfriend was thick and smoggy. We all needed some fresh air.”
“My mother and my brother were not happy about it,” Skye told Fox News Digital. “[My mother] also felt bad for Anthony. She was a mother, and he was still a young person to her who had a problem. But she definitely didn’t want me involved like that. And that was the most worried she’d ever been about me.”
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“I apologized years later for worrying her so much,” she continued. “There wasn’t much she [could’ve done], because I moved in with him. She wasn’t great about putting her foot down, although she did not want me to do that.”
In 2021, the relationship resurfaced on TikTok. It inspired Skye to set the record straight.
“I felt protective of my mom,” she said. “I didn’t like them saying, ‘How could she?’ because she tried to talk to me, but there wasn’t much she could have done to stop me. But she tried having conversations with me. I was defiant. I wasn’t mean to my mom. I wasn’t like, ‘Screw you,’ or anything. I spoke to her nicely, but I was very determined, for some strange reason.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Kiedis, 62, for comment. He previously wrote about the relationship in his 2004 memoir, “Scar Tissue.” Skye said years later, that people would want to know “my side of the story.”
In the book, Skye admitted Kiedis “wasn’t my great love.” But she believed that her love would somehow fix him. It didn’t.
Skye began to slowly pull away from Kiedis. At age 18, she met “the first great love of my life,” Beastie Boys member Adam Horovitz. She was 21 when they married in 1992.
But the union wasn’t meant to be. Skye described herself as “a serial cheater,” and the pair divorced in 1999.
“I’ll always feel sad if I hurt him, which I probably did at times,” said Skye. “Every decade, I get closer and closer to letting go and learning how to grieve and mourn the loss of such a big figure in my life who became a family member.
“It’s sort of like a death. . . . But every decade, I like to work on myself, and I like to process [it], try to get as healthy as I can mentally about things. But it’s been a very slow process.”
“Writing was another step of seeing the story from the outside, and it helped,” she said. “I forgive myself, because I couldn’t stop myself at the time. Now . . . I know myself. I have more awareness and self-control . . . I am not pulled by my emotions the way I was when I was a younger person.”
Looking back at the breakup was painful for Skye. She still doesn’t like listening to the Beastie Boys.
“It’s not that I want to be back with him,” she clarified. “I still have complicated feelings of remorse for what occurred. But it’s getting better. And the book has helped.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Horovitz, 58, for comment.
Skye has found love again. She married Australian rocker Ben Lee in 2008. They share a 15-year-old daughter.
“I already had a kid [with interior designer David Netto] when I met Ben, so I was doing everything I could to make her life safe and happy – she was my number one,” Skye explained. ” . . . I wanted someone I could trust. And I was getting older. I was maturing. I was no longer pulled by all these desires the same way. I tried to work on myself through all the years. I knew I liked being married, but how do I do that for real? Without blowing it up?”
“Yes, he’s a musician – all my big relationships, that was something in common,” she continued. “But I did want to go slow. . . . And it was about having a big talk with myself. I just thought, ‘I could do this. I don’t know how, but just try to open your mind and be different.’ I didn’t know how to do it, but I was willing.”
Today, Skye hopes her book will encourage readers to give themselves grace.
“Be less – as most people would say – hard on yourself,” she said. “I thought you have to know everything right away. . . . That was a lesson I had to learn. Don’t put so much pressure to know everything and do everything perfectly.”
