Emma Roberts' Dad Eric Roberts Talks About Their 'Loss of Relationship,' Names It His 'Toughest Period' of Life
Eric Roberts is giving insight into the “toughest period” of his life, which he says was the “loss of relationship” with his daughter Emma Roberts.
For those who don’t know, Eric shares Emma, 33, with his ex Kelly Cunningham. He lost custody of her during his battle with addiction in the early 1990s, but he has been sober since 1995.
Eric talked about his family during an interview on the Inside of You podcast.
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When asked to name the toughest period of his life, Eric said, “Probably the loss of relationship with my daughter. There’s not a pain, there’s a sadness for the, most likely, misunderstandings [that] I’ll have forever. Because we’re human.”
Eric says he was able to look back at his regrets when he became a grandfather.
“I started accepting that about myself with the birth of my grandchildren,” he said. “Especially the five-year-old. She was first, and she was a girl, so very vulnerable to me, and took a liking to me at two, two-and-a-half, in a very strong way, and named my wife ‘Famma,’ and we’re all very close. So that, and she also looks like Emma. Same coloring. And so it reminds me of what I didn’t have.”
Emma and her ex Garrett Hedlund are parents to son Rhodes, who will be 4 in December.
In his new memoir “Runaway Train,” Eric clarifies the reports that he lost custody of Emma when she was a young girl.
“I never saw myself as someone who deserved to have physical custody of Emma, not in a million years,” he wrote. “We both knew better than that. Kelly never claimed I was trying to get physical custody of Emma, so therefore, Julia never sided with Kelly in a custody fight. There really was no custody fight. I’m very happy to be straightening this out right now.”
Read what else Eric wrote about Emma in the book.