Sex, drugs and a Yiddish children’s book

Long before the term nepo baby became an expression of dynastic privilege (think Dakota Johnson, Kaia Gerber, Sofia Coppola), Ione Skye was one. The child of sixties hippie balladeer Donovan and model Enid Karl moved in a charmed circle of boho creatives, beautiful people and free spirits, together with her older brother Dono.

The name dropping in her memoir Say Everything is in a league of its own: it might be quicker to say who she did not know, either socially or in the biblical sense. She grew up in an ever-expanding circle of love children, drifting in and out of the orbits of their much-remarried famous fathers - her bestie Karis Hunt, daughter of Marsha Hunt and Mick Jagger, being a prime example, but there are countless others, blessed and burdened with surnames or parentage that guarantee access all areas to the countless clubs where Skye did most of her growing up. (Unlike some nepo babies, however, she was not surrounded by wealth, her mother took odd jobs to support herself as a single mother — including drug dealing.)

Celebrity gives this book its undeniable allure of glamour, but to read it as just a kiss-and -tell confessional would be to miss the point: Ione Skye forged a successful career as an ingenue actress alongside her chums River Phoenix and Robert Downey Junior, appearing in indie films like River’s Edge, Gas Food Lodging, Say Anything and many more forgettable films.

Unfairly, one talent is not enough: Despite years of drug and alcohol-fuelled oblivion, Skye really can write. The scenes she paints are as vivid as a series of good movie trailers, full of vulnerability and desire, and including dialogue and period detail like what she wore. She also has a sense of humour (her account of a doomed weekend between her brother and Gwyneth Paltrow is mischievously funny).

Celebrity raves have flowed from Lena Dunham , Miranda July, Bret Easton Ellis, Cameron Crowe, Molly Ringwald and the book has made the New York Times bestseller list.

We speak on the phone, having failed to link up via our Zoom appointment. Her husband, musician Ben Lee, who is clearly Mr Tech Support, intervenes to assist and suggest we go old school as time is limited.

Asked about her nepo baby status, Skye does not bridle. She thinks the term is not necessarily derogatory: "It’s not new, really. There always was Hollywood royalty. In my case I did not grow up with my famous father, as he and my mother were estranged, but I think now it’s accepted that parents and children might work together, like the father and son on Schitt’s Creek, so I see it as positive rather than unfair or undeserved advantage."

As for that prodigious capacity to recreate episodes of life that might have been faded by time and substances, Skye, now 54, explains that she relied on copious volumes of her own journals and letters, asked friends for shared memories, as well as her then ultra-cool brother what the jargon of the day was. As for the rest, "I used Google to check out what perfume we all wore, or what the name of a club was."

Her main concern, in writing honestly about her messy relationships, was not to hurt other people ‘like Anthony Kiedis’ mum’. Kiedis, the front man of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, was her first serious relationship. She was 17, he eight years her senior and they were a couple for two years. That time included an abortion, which he paid for but left her to undergo alone; continuing to use heroin; and having unprotected sex ‘which I consented to,’ she admits in the no-holds barred memoir.

She is even more candid about her own failings within her first marriage, at the age of 21 to rapper Adam Horowitz from the Beastie Boys. She admits to being a ‘ serial cheater’ with both men and women - she had flings with two of Madonna’s exes, Ingrid Casares and Jenny Shimizu , after meeting the Material Girl on a film they made together called Four Rooms.

Now she is married to Lee, what has happened to her bisexuality? "I’ve always been a little more straight than gay and I don’t feel like I am shutting something down at this point in my life."

Her mother read her book in several drafts. She has no idea whether her father has. They are in contact, but only sporadically: in her memoir, their encounter when she is 18 is raw with pain.

She admits that she gets sad listening to his romantic songs, wishing they had been written for her or for her mother, but is able to enjoy hits like Sunshine Superman and Season of the Witch. She made a playlist for each decade while she was editing the book.

Actor John Cusack has complained about her account of their short fling after years of friendship. She later had a short relationship with Matthew Perry before marrying Lee in 2008. Despite the hiccups in her past suggesting she does not have form for the role of wife she says: “I am the marrying kind, as they say, I like the stability, and I have always wanted to play house."

The couple now have two children and live in Sydney, where Skye is attempting to live a very different, more wholesome family life. "In Ben I found everything: someone who was fun and talented but also reliable, organised and with great emotional intelligence," she says, remembering the advice that her Hungarian Jewish grandmother gave her, but which she clearly chose to ignore for a long period of time: "She used to say ‘Don’t date someone just because they have cool shoes."

Skye values her Jewish heritage. “I loved spending time with my mother’s parents and their friends in New York so much, they made me feel stable and cosy," she says. Her fondness for their unfamiliar vocabulary made its way into a children’s book she wrote in 2014 called My Yiddish Vacation. "I love those words that sound funny like shvitz, schmalz, schmutz, verkakte but I also loved discovering how to write a narrative."

Skye compares parenting styles here with those of her generation in LA. "Over there, they are very helicoptery," she says. "But in both places, kids are exposed to much more through their phones than from the real world and that does make me worry. I am thin-skinned about things they see on TikTok."

These days, acting is no longer the main game for Skye. She is returning to her love of painting, which began in her twenties, and also hopes to develop film and TV. Perhaps surprisingly, she is stumped when asked to name an actor who could play her in an adaptation of her memoir but says there have been nibbles of interest.

Skye has found a sense of release in her story being out in the world. "It has helped me let go and find resolution with my exes," she says. She and Lee host a podcast called Weirder Together about being eccentric, married and creative on which they discuss everything from White Lotus to Led Zeppelin and the kind of parental dilemmas that few of us would need to consider, such as whether to allow a child to appear in a clip with P. Diddy.

Although she has made new friends in Sydney who are not famous, celebrity culture is still a world she can opt in and out of with the experience of a true survivor.

Say Everything: A Memoir by Ione Skye is published by Harper Collins