In his memoir, Eric Roberts praised his daughter Emma Roberts for becoming the type of parent he wasn’t able to be. “I loved my little daughter with the strength of Hercules, despite my own weaknesses,” Eric, 68, wrote in Runaway Train: Or the Story of My Life So Far , published on Tuesday, September 17, as reported by Entertainment Weekly . “However, I couldn’t handle the realities of an infant coming into my life, and I couldn’t handle being a parent!” Eric continued.
“I’m still not a father figure. Emma, on the other hand, certainly knows what that role is — now grown up and a mom herself. She’s that person to her first child, Rhodes.
” (Emma, 33, shares son Rhodes, 3, with ex-boyfriend Garrett Hedlund .) Roberts, who welcomed Emma with ex-partner Kelly Cunningham in 1991, cited his drug addiction as a major factor behind his lack of parenting chops. “The biggest consequence of my drug use was losing Emma,” he wrote.
“I was still impossibly coked up when she was born, which explains everything.” He added, “I had abandoned Kelly when Emma was just seven months old. We went through a lot, and [Kelly] saw me at my absolute worst — yet she stayed, for a time, though I’m sure she questioned whether or not she should.
We both wanted a child — maybe I did more than she — but we both wanted to become parents.” He noted: “I fell madly in love with Emma the first minute I saw her,” adding, “We were a nice little family for a while, bu.