10 Most Stunning Revelations From Whoopi Goldberg’s Memoir

Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me

Whoopi Goldberg

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Whoopi Goldberg‘s newest memoir is on shelves today, May 7, and it’s full of touching stories about her experience being raised as Caryn Elaine Johnson by her stoic single mother Emma alongside her brother and best friend Clyde. The pages of the autobiography — titled Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me — are filled with anecdotes that are intensely personal and yet read like the stuff of Hollywood legends.

The story details how the eventual Oscar winner first found her passion for performance and sweet stories about her mother’s support of her dreams and decisions … and how much of a fangirl she became around certain A-listers that she crossed paths with. Goldberg’s memorialization of herself and her late loved ones is emotional and so very informative.

Here are some of the biggest revelations to be found in Bits and Pieces.

Maggie Smith was her warm shoulder at a difficult time

Readers learn about Whoopi’s mother’s death fairly early on, and by the end of it, it’s clear just how devastating a moment that must have been for her, given how much she truly treasured her mother. When she learned of her mother’s death, she was in London starring in a stage rendition of Sister Act and found that her former co-star (whose role she was actually playing this time around) was the best source of support she could’ve possibly hoped for.

Her father was a gay man

Goldberg has previously publicly talked about the distance that she and her late father Robert Johnson had during her youth, and she doesn’t sugarcoat that extended absence in any way in the book (nor mince words when it comes to how her father’s family suddenly began to show up after she became famous). However, she does give her father props for choosing to live his truth at a time when doing so could be dangerous.

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She has never eaten an egg

Though her mother tried to force her to try different foods, she never budged when it came to eggs. Ever. As in, she’s still never had an egg for a meal. Who knew!?

Her mother was subjected to electroshock therapy after a suicide attempt

In perhaps one of the most gutting segments of the book, Goldberg writes about finding out that her mother attempted to die by suicide and was taken to a treatment facility while other members of her family cared for her and Clyde. What was more shocking to Whoopi was the fact that her estranged husband and father were the ones who made the decision to subject her to electroshock therapy, robbing her of memories and time with her children and giving her a lifelong aversion to doctors, even giving up her career as a hospital worker.

Her mother had a curious manner of teaching about the facts of life

At one point, Whoopi’s mother became a nursing school teacher and decided to let the Halloween pumpkins linger and rot in the classroom, much to the parents’ dismay. However, she had a good reason to do so: She wanted the children to witness the process of life’s decay so that they might not fear it.

There’s one role she really wants to play

Whoopi Goldberg has done a lot of things, but playing a monster is the one career feat she hasn’t quite achieved.

Her mother left everything behind when she moved them to California

Whoopi’s fame made it possible for her to pay for her mother to move to California with her and help raise her daughter Alex. Her mother didn’t hesitate to accept the offer, and upon arriving at the airport, brought just a couple of bags of her things and left the rest at her apartment in New York, where no one knows what happened to it.

Whoopi struggled with cocaine addiction in Hollywood

After quitting drugs as a teenager, she found herself falling into the hard-partying L.A. lifestyle until she had an embarrassing wake-up call. She wrote in the book that a hotel housekeeper once walked in and found her with a face covered in cocaine, and that was when she decided to quit for good.

Patrick Swayze pushed for her to get the Ghost gig

Goldberg wasn’t originally in contention for the role that would earn her an Oscar as Oda Mae, but Swayze wanted her in the role and fought for her to get it.

Elizabeth Taylor influenced her to include a very specific rider in her contracts

There are many celebrities whose encounters with Whoopi Goldberg make for enchanting stories in Bits and Pieces, but the one that seemingly had the most lasting impact was her time around Elizabeth Taylor, who taught her to request a gift for each movie that would help her remember her experience. Lo, Goldberg now has an entire art collection that serves as a history book for her filmography as a result.

Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me is on shelves now.