She dazzled audiences in the 1980s with a rare, trailblazing talent, rising from modeling to becoming an Oscar-winning actress with stunning speed.
But behind the glamour and fame was a private battle—and a childhood moment when she came frighteningly close to death at just eight years old.
Amish-like upbringing
Few stars of the ’90s combined public affection and critical praise the way this actress did. With her famous dimples and commanding screen presence, she seemed like pure Hollywood magic, turning early roles into vivid proof of her raw ability from the start.
Born on January 21, 1958, in Wareham, Massachusetts, she sensed early that performing was where she belonged.
“I was three years old, and how I even knew it was a job, I have no idea, because we were only allowed to watch Disney movies, which were animated.”
Her parents, Bill and Lucille, were practical and old-fashioned—so much so that she once joked they “would have been Amish had they heard of being Amish.”
She and her older brother, Dan, were raised with a strong emphasis on politeness and proper conduct.
Reflecting on her New England childhood, she said, “My parents are both from Vermont, very old-fashioned New England. We heated our house with wood my father chopped. My mom grew all of our food. We were very underexposed to everything.”
When she almost died
Although she grew up sheltered and far from Hollywood’s spotlight, her childhood still held experiences that were genuinely terrifying.
She has shared that at age eight, she nearly died during a frightening car ride with her 99-year-old great-uncle Jack. As he drifted in and out of oncoming traffic, neither she nor her parents spoke up—even as a car sped toward them. At the last possible second, Jack corrected the car’s course, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision. The incident left her with a lesson that stayed with her: remain polite, even in moments when you should speak up.
That struggle—being too polite to protect yourself—became a central theme of her 2022 memoir, Dying of Politeness.
The horrible secret she was carrying around
In the book, she also revealed another deeply traumatic experience from her childhood: she was molested by a neighbor while delivering his newspaper.
Like many survivors, she said she did not fully grasp the seriousness of what happened until she was older.
“It caused a lot of shame in me that that happened because I didn’t know what he was doing when he was touching me in that way. I didn’t know that it was wrong. I had no reaction to it, and then to see my mother’s reaction, [it was like], ‘Oh, my God, this was a big deal. I did something terribly wrong,” she told Vanity Fair.
Her mother confronted the neighbor, but no police report was filed.
“I knew that he was also to blame because she strolled up the street and told him never to touch me again and then told me never to go up the stairs to his apartment again. But she didn’t explain what had happened or why it was bad to do the thing that he was doing, so it just felt like this horrible secret that I was carrying around.”
“My big lesson in life was you can’t ever complain about anything,” she said.
“You can’t draw that kind of attention to yourself by complaining about something. So I didn’t talk about it, but I wanted to talk about it.”
Bullied by classmates
Another defining part of her youth was her height. In high school, she was the tallest girl in her class—a fact that, instead of making her feel confident, often damaged her self-esteem.
“They always wanted me on the basketball team, but I wasn’t too good,” she told The Chilliwack Progress in 1985. “Track was my thing. I did high jumps and hurdles on the girls’ team. But it was hopeless if you were taller than everybody else.”
“I was tall from minute one,” she later told The View. “I was very self-conscious and shy, and the last thing I wanted to do was stand out, and yet, every minute, I stood out.”
The teasing made it worse.
“The boys’ nickname for me in high school was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, which, you know, is so charming,” she recalled, referencing the Lakers legend.
Outside athletics, she played flute in the marching band. During her senior year, she studied abroad in Sweden and became fluent in the language.
She first attended New England College in New Hampshire, then transferred to Boston University to study drama. Her parents supported the decision without hesitation.
“I think they knew so little about it, and it would be incredibly rare and freaky if I was able to have a successful career,” she told The Gentle Woman.
She also shared an unexpected detail: she never told her parents she did not graduate college, even though Wikipedia had listed it as true for years.
“They never knew the truth before they passed away,” she said.
Model for Victoria’s Secret