When Emma Roberts was born, Eric Roberts was eager to be a dad — but he wasn't ready to be one. In his new memoir, Runaway Train: Or the Story of My Life So Far, Eric, 68, writes about how being "coked up" when Emma was born impacted his ability to be a good father. The actor also admitted that he is "still not a father figure."
Per Entertainment Weekly, when Emma, now 33, was just 7 months old, Eric "abandoned" Emma's mom, Kelly Cunningham.
Recently, Eric praised his daughter's work while on the Still Here Hollywood podcast — but also admitted that he's not supposed to talk about his daughter.
"I’m in love with my daughter’s work these days," Eric said on the podcast. "I can’t believe how great she’s become. … I’m so proud of her I can’t see straight."
But both Emma and Eric's sister Julia Roberts have told him to stop speaking about them.
He said Emma "told me not to talk about her, but I stumbled and do. I’m not supposed to talk about either [Julia or Emma]. But I do."
Now, through his memoir, more details about his relationship with his sister and his daughter have come to light. Per Entertainment Weekly, he described being so excited to welcome Emma, and absolutely adoring her right away.
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"I fell madly in love with Emma the first minute I saw her," he wrote, adding that he "sang 'Happy Birthday' to [Kelly's] belly a lot" when she was pregnant.
"When Emma finally made her appearance, she wasn’t quite quiet and mellow, but when I started singing 'Happy Birthday' to her, she must have recognized my voice because she calmed right down," he recalled in the book.
His excitement about welcoming Emma didn't change the fact that he was not ready to be a good parent. In his memoir, he blamed his drug addiction for his inability to be the type of dad he wanted to be.
"The biggest consequence of my drug use was losing Emma," he wrote, per Entertainment Weekly. "I was still impossibly coked up when she was born, which explains everything."
Emma, on the other hand, is the kind of parent he would've liked to be, Eric wrote in his memoir. Emma became a mom on December 27, 2020. Emma previously told Tatler that she hopes her son Rhodes Robert will "feel that there's nothing he couldn't ask or tell me."
She also hopes that she can raise "an amazing boy." "What it means to be a man is being rewritten right now," she told the publication. "I hope my contribution to the world can be raising an amazing boy who turns into an amazing man."
In his memoir, Eric recalled how he and Emma's mom "both wanted a child — maybe I did more than she."
Wanting to be a parent wasn't enough though. "I loved my little daughter with the strength of Hercules, despite my own weaknesses," he wrote in his memoir. "However, I couldn’t handle the realities of an infant coming into my life, and I couldn’t handle being a parent!"
