Family feuds: Jennifer Aniston, Matthew McConaughey, Drew Barrymore take nasty battles with mothers public

Hollywood stars are not exempt from having troubled relationships with their mothers.

Drew Barrymore recently clarified comments that she “never” has wished her mother was dead. The pair has had a turbulent relationship for decades with Barrymore, 48, becoming emancipated from her mother at the age of 14 to strike out and live on her own.

On the other hand, “iCarly” star Jennette McCurdy titled her 2020 memoir, “I’m Glad my Mom Died.”

Matthew McConaughey and his mother, Kelly, sat down for an episode of Jada Pinkett-Smith’s “Red Table Talk” in 2021 to dish on their eight-year estrangement. 

Here’s a look at some celebrities who have made their feuds with their mothers public over the years.

DREW BARRYMORE SAYS SHE ‘NEVER’ WISHED HER MOM ‘WAS DEAD,’ CLARIFIES COMMENTS

Drew Barrymore

Barrymore has been candid about her relationship with her estranged mother, Jaid Barrymore, whom she financially supports to this day.

“All their moms are gone, and my mom’s not,” Barrymore told Vulture of McCurdy and Brooke Shields in an interview published earlier this month. “And I’m like, ‘Well, I don’t have that luxury.’ But I cannot wait. I don’t want to live in a state where I wish someone to be gone sooner than they’re meant to be so I can grow. I actually want her to be happy and thrive and be healthy. But I have to f—ing grow in spite of her being on this planet.”

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Shortly after Barrymore’s interview comments hit the internet, the actress took to Instagram to clarify what she meant.

“You know what, to all you tabloids out there, you have been f—ing with my life since I was 13 years old,” Barrymore said in an Instagram video in early June. “I have never said that I wished my mother was dead. How dare you put those words in my mouth.”

“I have been vulnerable, and tried to figure out a very difficult, painful relationship, while admitting it is difficult to do while a parent is alive, and that for those of us that have to figure that out in real-time, cannot wait as in they cannot wait for the time. Not that the parent is dead.”

“Don’t twist my words around or ever say that I wish my mother was dead. I have never said that. I never would.”

She added, “In fact, I go on to say that I wish that I never have to live an existence where I would wish that on someone because that is sick.”

The interview, part of which was conducted before Mother’s Day, also featured a separate conversation with Barrymore that happened at a later date. Barrymore revealed she had texted her mother a simple “happy birthday” message, and her mother responded by saying she was proud of the actress.

Jennifer Aniston

Jennifer Aniston’s mother, Nancy Dow, released a tell-all book, “From Mother and Daughter to Friends,” in 1999 detailing their contentious relationship.

The release of the book led to an estrangement between Aniston and Dow.

Five years after the book’s release, Aniston and Dow still had not mended their relationship. “I never thought my mom would not know my husband,” Aniston said, referencing Brad Pitt in an interview with The Associated Press at the time. 

Prior to Dow’s death in 2016, the mother-daughter duo were back on speaking terms.

“She was critical,” Aniston told The Hollywood Reporter in 2015. “She was very critical of me. Because she was a model, she was gorgeous, stunning. I wasn’t. I never was. I honestly still don’t think of myself in that sort of light, which is fine.” 

Aniston also said she found her mother to be “unforgiving,” adding “she would hold grudges that I just found so petty.”

“We’re all fine,” the “Friends” alum noted at the time. 

Dow, who was a former model and actress, was 79 at the time of her death. She “passed away peacefully surrounded by family and friends after enduring a long illness,” a representative for Aniston shared with E! News in 2016. 

Matthew McConaughey

It’s safe to say that the relationship between Matthew McConaughey and his mother has not always been alright, alright, alright.

In 2021, the actor and his mother, Kay McConaughey, paid a visit to “Red Table Talk” to discuss his memoir, “Greenlights,” and opened up about their eight-year estrangement. 

“As soon as I got ‘famous’ after [1996’s] ‘A Time to Kill,’ I started to have my weekly Sunday call home to call my mother,” McConaughey said, per People magazine. “Mother wasn’t answering the phone. A fan of my fame was answering the phone.”

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McConaughey continued, “I was trying to find my own balance with fame and stuff. And I would share things with her… some of those things I would share might show up in the six o’clock news three days later.”

The “Dallas Buyers Club” star recalled turning on his television to see that his mother allowed camera crews to enter his childhood home, showing off his bedroom and sharing private, family stories.

“I didn’t think you’d find out,” he remembered his mother saying, causing him to turn away from her for eight years.

“There were years there where I would not share things with her because I was also finding my own balance,” he said. “I was like, ‘Look, mom, loose lips will sink ships. There are a lot of people that would like to know these things, and it’s none of their business.'” 

In 2004, they turned things around and re-entered one another’s lives.

During the “Red Table Talk” appearance, Kay admitted to “enjoying his fame more than he was, I guess.”

During the coronavirus lockdown, Kay stayed with her son, his wife Camilla and their three children.

Brooke Shields

Brooke Shields had a troubled relationship with her mother, Teri Shields, before her death. Teri struggled with alcohol abuse when Shields was a young girl, further complicating their relationship.

When the “Pretty Baby” star was 10 years old, her mother, who also served as the star’s manager, commissioned photographer Gary Gross to shoot nude pics of Shields for the Playboy publication “Sugar ’n’ Spice.”

Her mother faced backlash for allowing her daughter to take on such racy roles, but it wouldn’t be the last time.

Speaking with the Sunday Times, Shields said she wanted to please her mother and found herself justifying decisions she herself wouldn’t make.

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“It’s so innate when you’re an only child of a single mother,” Shields said. “All you want to do is love your parent and keep them alive forever, and so I wanted to protect her. And by virtue of protecting her, I was justifying everything, and that solidified that bond between us.”

Shields revealed that she previously defended her mother’s decision.

“It was too much for me to cop to that, really,” she said. “Writing about it just broke me. It was her that I was protecting. Everyone always wanted me to be angry with her, but anger was just too sad for me to take when I looked at how insecure she was.”

Shields previously told the New Yorker that at one time, she felt that she was a parent to her own mother.

“I’d been parenting her, in a way, from the time I was a little girl,” Shields told the outlet. “When you grow up in an alcoholic household, you learn to navigate it at a very young age, and I was an only child. I just wanted to keep her safe. And she could walk on water – she was my everything.”

The two-time Golden Globe nominee previously told The Associated Press that she developed coping mechanisms to handle her mother’s drinking problem. 

“I think that happens with a child of an alcoholic,” she said.  “You know, you really do learn to compartmentalize.”

“You love a person who is very broken and has a disease that they cannot seem to get under control. But you can’t afford to have their love not be real.” Shields said she would become “very organized” when things felt out of control. “That sort of was my center, that was my meditation, you know, redoing my Filofax or refolding my socks.”

Shields’ mom passed away in 2012 after a battle with dementia.

Jennette McCurdy

McCurdy released her memoir, “I’m Glad My Mom Died,” in 2022 and was a guest on Pinkett-Smith’s “Red Table Talk” the same year.

During her appearance, McCurdy detailed the alleged abuse she received from her mother Debra.

“With moms, there seems to be a need to keep them up on a pedestal,” McCurdy shared on the show. “And I had my mom on that pedestal, and it was really detrimental to my mental health.”

She began her interview the same way she began her memoir, detailing her upbringing and the condition of her living arrangements at the age of 2 alongside her three brothers. McCurdy shared that their house had a rat and possum problem due to her mother’s hoarding habits.

“I remember a time when [my brothers] Marcus, Dustin and Scott slept in their trundle bunk bed and I slept in my nursery, but now our bedrooms are so filled with stuff that you can’t even determine where the beds are let alone sleep in them,” she read from her book.

“We don’t sleep in our beds anymore. Trifold mats were purchased from Costco for us to sleep on in the living room. I’m pretty sure the mats were meant for kids’ gymnastics exercises.”

The “Sam & Kat” star also discussed her struggle with anorexia, and claimed her mother was the one who taught her how to be anorexic and introduced calorie restrictions at age 11.

McCurdy, who was raised Mormon, also shared that her mother bathed her then 16-year-old brother, Scott, and herself, 11, at the time, together, which made them both “embarrassed.”

Toward the end of the sit-down interview, McCurdy shared the last conversation she had with her mother before she died. She said her mom was “detached behind the eyes” as she laid in a hospice bed in the middle of their living room.

McCurdy shared that she and her brothers attempted to share their “good news” with their mother in an attempt to “wake her up” from the fog-like state she was in. 

“I said, ‘Mommy, I’m so skinny right now,’ like the thing that I felt like was the most that I had to offer was my thinness. In my core, at that time, I believed that that would get my mother to wake up. I believed that she cared more about my body and my weight than she did about anything else that could possibly be uttered by my brother’s mouths.”

McCurdy’s mother died in 2013.

Mariah Carey

Mariah Carey has had a “complicated” relationship with her mother Patricia.

The singer’s 2020 memoir, “The Meaning of Mariah Carey,” shares a detailed look at the pair’s relationship. Carey mentioned Patricia in the opening statement that read, ″And to Pat, my mother, who, through it all, I do believe actually did the best she could. I will love you the best I can, always,″ according to People magazine.

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″I loved her deeply, and, like most kids, I wanted her to be a safe place for me. Above all, I desperately wanted to believe her,″ Carey wrote, per the outlet.

″But ours is a story of betrayal and beauty. Of love and abandonment. Of sacrifice and survival. I’ve emancipated myself from bondage several times, but there is a cloud of sadness that I suspect will always hang over me, not simply because of my mother but because of our complicated journey together.”

She continued, ″It has caused me so much pain and confusion. Time has shown me there is no benefit in trying to protect people who never tried to protect me. Time and motherhood have finally given me the courage to honestly face who my mother has been to me.”

Carey said it was “excruciatingly painful” to end her relationship with her mother, adding, ″there is no ‘artful’ way of letting go of my mother, and our relationship is anything but simple.″

She added, ″Like many aspects of my life, my journey with my mother has been full of contradictions and competing realities. It’s never been only black-and-white – it’s been a whole rainbow of emotions. Our relationship is a prickly rope of pride, pain, shame, gratitude, jealousy, admiration and disappointment. A complicated love tethers my heart to my mother’s.″

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Patricia, who was an opera singer, wed Carey’s father, Alfred Roy, in 1960 and split in 1973. Mariah was 3 at the time.

Britney Spears

Britney Spears has had an unlucky time when it comes to having a healthy relationship with her parents.

The “Baby One More Time” singer was placed under a conservatorship – run by her father Jamie Spears – in 2008. The conservatorship was terminated in 2021.

According to Us Weekly, Britney was upset with her mother, Lynne, because she claimed Lynne had the opportunity to intervene and stop the conservatorship but didn’t.

Britney took to social media after her conservatorship was terminated and slammed her mother and younger sister for their alleged lack of support in a video shared in August 2022, the outlet reported.

“The whole thing that made it really confusing for me is these people [the #FreeBritney movement] are on the street fighting for me, but my sister [Jamie Lynn Spears] and my mother aren’t doing anything,” Britney reportedly said in the since-deleted recording. 

“To me, it was like they secretly honestly liked me being the bad one – like I was messed up, and they kind of just liked it that way. Otherwise, why weren’t they outside my doorstep, saying, ‘Baby girl, get in the car. Let’s go.’ I think that’s the main thing that hurt me. I couldn’t process how my family went along with it for so long. Their only response was, ‘We didn’t know.’”

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Lynne reportedly took to her Instagram story at the time and said, “Britney, your whole life I have tried my best to support your dreams and wishes! And also, I have tried my best to help you out of hardships!”

Britney and Lynne have since reconciled, with the pop star sharing the news on Instagram last month.

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“My sweet mama showed up at my door step yesterday after 3 years… it’s been such a long time… with family there’s always things that need to be worked out… but time heals all wounds!!! And after being able to communicate what I’ve held in for an extremely long time, I feel so blessed we were able to try to make things RIGHT!!!” Britney wrote.

She noted that she loves Lynne “so much.” “Psss… I’m so blessed we can have coffee together after 14 years!!! Let’s go shopping afterwards!!!” the singer concluded her post.