by Jackie Willis 9:30 AM PDT, March 21, 2017
Katey Sagal says her battle with drug and alcohol addiction began at a young age.
In her new memoir, Grace Notes: My Recollections, the Sons of Anarchy star recalls growing up in Hollywood and living near Judy Garland and her daughter, Lorna Luft, when she was 12. Sagal writes that she and Luft quickly became “neighborhood buddies,” and claims in her book that both their mothers were abusing prescription pills.
“Lorna’s mom had a lot of pills on her bedside table and slept past noon just like my mom,” Sagal says. “We hung tight. And, of course, I thought everyone’s mom took a lot of pills.”
At age 14, Sagal writes that she was prescribed diet pills, which she says “gave me a way to fix what ailed me — just like my mom had with her pills for as long as I could remember.” This ultimately led to the 63-year-old actress’ 15-year battle with diet pills, cocaine and alcohol addiction.
Also in the memoir, Sagal claims she had a longtime affair with KISS band member Gene Simmons in her early 20s. “At first, I thought Gene was really weird,” she recalls of meeting and flirting with the rocker when she was a singing waitress at a bar in Santa Monica, California. “I took him home with me that night because he was quite persuasive, and I like men.”
Sagal says she and Simmons had an on-again, off-again relationship for years, but it ended after she told him that she was going to marry musician Freddie Beckmeier unless he proposed. She writes that Simmons laughed off the idea and she went on to have a three-year marriage with Beckmeier, followed by a seven-year marriage to drummer Jack White, with whom she had two children. She is currently married to Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter and they have one child.
