An attempt to take her own life has left her parents reeling. Jackie Brygel reports.
She’s the girl who should have had it all. With a pop legend dad and a former supermodel mum, Alexa Ray Joel looked destined for a life the rest of us could only dream about.
But after a tortured early adulthood marked by her parents’ troubles, relationship dramas and cruel attacks on her appearance, the 23-year-old last week reportedly tried to take her own life by overdosing on pills.
Paramedics rushed to Alexa’s New York apartment after a female caller, identifying herself as a friend but believed to be Alexa, said that she had taken several pills, and “wanted to die”, but had changed her mind.
When ambulance officers arrived, they discovered the young celebrity was having trouble breathing. She was taken to a nearby hospital, and her mother raced to her side.
“She [Christie] stated that the victim had no health problem and that she was not aware how she [Alexa] had been feeling,” a police report said.
The incident reportedly took place after a “dysfunctional family getaway” with her mother in the Turks and Caicos Islands, and follows Alexa’s traumatic relationship break-up with musician boyfriend Jimmy Riot.
Cursed by a sense of insecurity about not living up to her mother’s much-admired beauty or her father’s extraordinary success, Alexa has recently had a far from easy time.
“Her mother was a supermodel. Her father is one of the biggest pop stars in America. She’s trying to find her place in the world,” a friend told the New York Daily News.
She was also the victim of a string of savage attacks on her appearance by internet bloggers, including Perez Hilton, who mockingly compared her to her mother.
“I think this Perez Hilton guy is quite dangerous, because he has actually made a business out of calling people fat and ugly,” she responded.
But friends say she is unable to brush off criticism and, according to the New York Post, she has been berated by her mother, too.
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