The woman in the photo is Demi Moore as a young child. Despite a deeply traumatic upbringing—including abandonment by her biological father before birth, an unstable home with alcoholic parents, her stepfather’s suicide when she was 15, and a horrific rape at age 15 by an older man who claimed her mother had “sold” her to him for $500 (as detailed in her 2019 memoir Inside Out)—Moore rose to become one of Hollywood’s most iconic and highest-paid actresses. Her breakthrough came in the 1980s with films like St. Elmo’s Fire (1985) and About Last Night (1986), followed by massive hits such as Ghost (1990), A Few Good Men (1992), Indecent Proposal (1993), and Disclosure (1994), where she earned $12.5 million, making her the highest-paid actress at the time. She’s beloved for her vulnerability and resilience on screen, and her net worth today exceeds $200 million from acting, production, and endorsements.

For years, this actress has delivered award-winning performances on screen, earning recognition and icon status in Hollywood.

Yet her early life was anything but glamorous.

Her biological father abandoned her before she was even born, and at 15, she was raped in her own home by a man who claimed he had paid her mother $500.

Kidnapped by her stepfather

Born in 1962 in Roswell, New Mexico, this Hollywood icon was the child of a brief union between her teen mother, Virginia, and an Air Force airman, Charles Harmon Sr. Her father deserted her then-18-year-old mother after a two-month marriage, long before she was born.

Instead, when the actress was just three months old, her mother married a newspaper advertising salesman.

Because her stepfather often switched jobs, the family relocated frequently.

”I was desperate for a sense of belonging so I adopted different characters wherever I went,” she once reflected.