Mena Suvari Opens Up Past Drug & Sexual Abuse In New Book

Mena Suvari, an actress whose career skyrocketed when she appeared in American Pie and American Beauty, has written book, The Great Peace: A Memoire, telling how she’s lived “a double life” during this time – one where she was sexually abused, struggled with drug addiction and had an “eerie” encounter with her Beauty co-star, Kevin Spacey.

“I spent almost my entire life feeling disgusted, ashamed, and in denial about what happened to me and what I had allowed myself to do and be a part of,” she wrote. “Then one day, I stopped. I stopped running away and I looked at myself. I looked into the pain and what I saw was that I was ready to leave it all behind and heal.”

In her book, the actress recalls a “strange” acting exercise that she and Spacey did on the set of the best-picture Oscar winner, American Beauty.

“Kevin took me into a small room with a bed and we laid next to each other, me facing toward him while he held me lightly,” she wrote. “Lying there with Kevin was strange and eerie but also calm and peaceful…. I wasn’t sure if Kevin was interested in me or not. My head immediately went to that place, and I didn’t know how far he was going to take it or how I was going to react if he did go there. But he didn’t.”

Suvari has said that she “thought of that day” when Spacey faced several allegations of sexual misconduct, which Spacey has denied.

“Between the ages of twelve and twenty, I was the victim of repeated sexual abuse,” she wrote in her book. She wrote about a 16-year-old boy, who she referred to as “KJ,” that raped her when she was 12-years-old. She also revealed that at the age of 16, one of her representatives who was in his mid-30s had sex with her, in which she contracted herpes.

At the age of 17, she was in a relationship with 26-year-old “Tyler.” Suvari said that during the three years they were together, he pressured her to perform sexual acts and emotionally abused her. “Little by little he whittled away the thin layer of self-worth I had left,” she wrote.

During her teenage years, Suvari struggled with drug addiction as a way to cope with her experiences.

“I took drugs to numb myself from the pain,” she wrote. “Alcohol. Pot. Coke. Crystal meth. Acid. Ecstasy. Mushrooms. Mescaline. It was my way of detaching from the hell of my existence – and surviving.”

“I’ve had so many moments in life when I’ve been knocked down by other people,” she during the interview with Vanity Fair in 2018. “You start to convince yourself to stay in the safe lane. And then – whether you want to call it age or whatever – I just didn’t give a s— anymore.”