Ione Skye is not joking with the title of her book – Say Everything. Released in March 2025, Skye’s first person account of her life is exactly what most people want from a celebrity memoir – all the juice! She covers every part of her life and rise to fame including abandonment, family, fashion, her sexuality, relationships, drugs, her famous friends and their famous parents, her own children, movies, art, and music. It’s ALL there and the information is given to the reader in warp speed chapters that are the definition of page-turners.
Because Skye lived her life in overdrive, there is a lot going on in this book. She traveled the world, has/had many celebrity friends, and was a young actress on the Hollywood scene at an impressionable age. But even with all the glamour, the main theme of her story is abandonment as her famous father (folk singer Donovan) walked out on the family (Skye, her bother Dono, and their mother) when she was young. Because she didn’t meet him until she was 18, his absence informed the first two and a half decades of her life as most decisions she made were reactions to him leaving his family (with seemingly no explanation) to start a new one.
But her mindset wasn’t just about her dad. Her mom was famous in her own right – she dated many famous people including Jim Morrison and Keith Richards – but was (mostly) there, in all her bohemian glory, for Skye and Dono. Her portrayal in this book is a clear reminder of how parents – whether they are present or not – can inform the rest of a kid’s life. Because of her dad, Skye spent most of her teens and 20s wanting to be chosen and yearning to be “somebody’s favorite.” As a teenager she remembers thinking, “If I was going to meet my dad on a sidewalk, I’d rather be famous first.” Wow, what a thought process.
The house she grew up in was a bohemian bungalow where actors, musicians, and models were constantly sashaying in and out of which sounds fun but also lacking in stability. As a result, it makes sense that when she was on a movie set she “loved the daily call sheet that told [her] exactly where to be and when” because she didn’t have that anywhere else. Once Skye began acting, she started paying her mom’s rent so to say the parental accountability scales were tipped in an odd direction is an understatement. Speaking of responsibility, her brother Dono really was “the connector” (her words) and was responsible for starting her career because he convinced her to go to her first movie audition – River’s Edge with Keanu Reeves – when she was only fifteen years old. Around the same time, Skye got emancipated so she could work full-time making her a high school dropout until many years later when she got her GED. “I needed to be own person, not the caretaker of my mother’s heart, trying to fill the void left by my missing dad. Legal emancipation sounded to me like emotional emancipation.”
Over the years, Dono introduced her to a variety of famous friends including River Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow, Adam “Ad Rock” Horovitz (more on him in a minute) and many more actors, musicians, and models. For example, Skye is still friends with the children of Mick Fleetwood, Frank Zappa, Brian Jones, and Mick Jagger. She also met Matthew Perry on his first movie and acted with Jennifer Aniston before either of the soon-to-be “Friends” were household names.
One of the biggest issues Skye faced (in retrospect) throughout the book is her age as she was very young at the beginning of her modeling and acting career and when she started dating. At age 17, she dated Anthony Kiedis and it was ugly. Really ugly. Skye got caught up desperately trying to save a drug addict (eight years her senior) who didn’t want to stop and didn’t want to be saved. As a result, she saw and participated in a lot that she should not have. “Without Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life to keep me company through those lonely late-night drives, my soul might have extinguished.” I wonder how Kiedis feels about being the heartless, unfaithful, manipulative, drug addict villain who changed Skye forever. I hope he feels as terrible about his actions as he made her feel as both a teenage girl and as a human being.
At age 18, she met and dated Horovitz and they got married when she was 21 and he was 25. “Getting married was a way to individuate from Mom without having to go out into the world on my own…I didn’t realize my childhood baggage would come along with me.” Another example of her making decisions based on her parents’ actions (or lack thereof). All these years later (Skye is 54 now), her self-awareness, as well as her ability and willingness to acknowledge why she did what she did, is admirable. After her marriage to Horovitz ended – following infidelities on her part and then avoiding divorce papers – she finally realized: “I would always be an abandoned daughter, always searching for proof of love. No matter how much proof Adam gave me, it would never be enough.” Sad, brutal, honest, and real. I wonder how Horovitz feels about this book too because he is clearly the hero in Skye’s eyes.
While she worked with some impressive people throughout her career – including Dennis Hopper, Madonna, and Robert Downey Jr., just to name of few – most people over 40 know Skye from Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything which on paper is a high school romantic comedy but on screen is so much more. Released in 1989, Say Anything was Crowe’s directorial debut following writing Fast Times at Ridgemont High. (Side note: Coincidentally, Crowe’s long-anticipated book, The Uncool, which was released last week, is next on my reading list). Anyway, Skye recalls her first meeting with Crowe when he explained Say Anything as “a love letter to young love and music and the city of Seattle…and real people.” I love that of course. I also love that Skye “wanted to be one of Cameron’s real people more than anything” and that Crowe “directed through music.” Although John Cusack is one of my favorites, apparently he needed some cajoling to commit to the movie. Before signing on, he had the gall to ask Crowe why he should do the film and of course the director came up with the perfect answer: “Because you get to be a warrior for optimism.” And we know how that turned out. Fun fact: Billy Idol’s “To Be A Lover” and Fishbone’s “Turn The Other Way” were both in consideration for the boombox scene. “In Your Eyes” was on Crowe’s wedding mixtape and, as we know, that was clearly the song.
Although the list of names mentioned throughout Say Everything reads like an 80s and 90s movie star and musician roll call, I wish Skye talked more about her experience filming Wayne’s World and Fever Pitch. Even though her parts in both were small, they are excellent movies that deserved more pages. That being said, Skye wrote the book we all wanted to read. She holds nothing back and, true to the title, says everything.
There were (and still are) so many famous people everywhere in her life, and therefore all over this book, that it’s almost overwhelming. Hollywood is a small town, celebrities attract other celebrities, and it makes for quite the juicy tale. “Writing this book has been my way of surrendering my past, as well as an act of self-forgiveness. Finally, with love and a little fanfare, I’m letting my stories go.” She admits to her indiscretions, lays out her reasoning for the decisions (both positive and negative) she made, and points out that she has done and continues to do better for her husband (musician Ben Lee) and her daughters. Good for her for breaking the cycle of crazy, coming out the other side, and having the guts to put it all out there for public consumption. As a mom and as a writer, I appreciate Skye and this memorable book. Diane Court would be proud.
Quotes
“With each of my fathers, I would try to be easy and sweet, wanting them to love me more than anyone else, even more than my mom, as I always wanted to be somebody’s favorite.”
“I was hungry for wisdom of any kind.”
“Wherever you went with River, he was the place…River could be so moved by life, you wanted to join in with anything he was inspired by.”
“God bless Mel Brooks for turning anxiety into art.”
“As expected, Madonna wasn’t warm and fuzzy.”
“I lived for an honorable mention from someone I admired.”
“Mom’s true gangster elegance came out in that moment.”
“He was the kind of brave I wanted to be as an actor. No one threw caution to the wind like Robert.”
“I called my own shots and followed my heart without shame or apology.”
“I’d aspired to be brave like Joan Cusack since Say Anything.”
“Ever since I could remember, I’d been racing through life, racing for the next gilded moment, and the next, and the next.”
“Not caring obsessively about what people think has been so freeing. At fifty-four, I’m more playful and lighthearted than I ever was.”
“my inner narrator was always at work”
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