Liza Minnelli has shared heartbreaking details of her upbringing with mother Judy Garland – before describing how she once found her husband in bed with another man in an insightful look into her life.

In an extract from her first ever memoir called Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!, shared in this week’s The Sunday Times, the actress, 79, spared no details of her colourful life.

In the book she describes how Judy – who died at the age of 47 in 1969 – was ‘poisoned with uppers and downers’ as a child and ‘spent millions of dollars’ on rehab units in a bid to address her addiction to drugs.

Liza said despite her struggles her mother ‘loved her passionately’ and Liza loved her back, as she launched into a fierce defence of the troubled actress who was dogged by claims she ‘drank too much, took too many pills and ignored her family’.

In the extract, she penned: ‘They [the press] said she was a bad mother, that she drank too much, took too many pills and ignored her family.

‘Mama spent millions of dollars in rehab units and hospitals, praying that they could heal her. She had rounds of electroshock therapy. Nothing worked. It’s no secret who the culprits were. 

Liza Minnelli has shared heartbreaking details of her upbringing with mother Judy Garland (seen together – Liza is age 17 here)

She has also described how she once found her husband Peter Allen in bed with another man (seen at their wedding in 1967)

‘Industry executives – and, I’m told, my grandmother – had poisoned her with uppers and downers since she was a child star.’

She described how by the age of 13 she was her mother’s ‘caretaker’ as well as a ‘nurse, doctor, pharmacologist and psychiatrist’ and that she would give her drugs every day so that she could function. 

Liza told how the way Judy dealt with the hardships of life was with a ‘clever quip, a pill and a drink’. 

Liza was born in 1946 to movie star Judy and director Vincente Minnelli, who became a couple while working on the classic film Meet Me In St. Louis.

Vincente Minnelli was the second of Judy’s five husbands, in a rocky personal life buffeted by decades of addiction that led to her death.

In the book Liza describes how when her sister Lorna Luft was born in 1952 Judy tried to kill herself shortly after.

After doctors treated her Liza describes how the next morning ‘mama was in a great mood’ and behaved ‘like nothing happened’ which led Liza to think she was ‘immortal’.   

In 1969, she was rocked by Judy’s death in London at 47 of what the authorities declared an ‘incautious self-overdosage’ of sleeping pills.

In her book Liza describes how she ‘cried for eight days straight’ and said that year was ‘a time of unimaginable sadness and fateful change’. 

In an extract from her first ever memoir called Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!, the actress, 79, spared no details of her colourful life 

Liza decided to write the book after being infuriated by the inaccurate depictions of her own life and that of her late mother, whom she is pictured with in 1965

Out March 10, the memoir also including details of the time she walked in on her first husband Peter Allen having sex in their marital bed with a man.

She told how she struggled to process what she’d seen and felt ‘fragile and afraid’ after what happened.

However after Liza’s forgiveness they remained happily married for another seven years. 

Her love life increasingly became what Andy Warhol famously described in his diaries as ‘complicated,’ as she took up with Peter Sellers while legally married to Allen and engaged to Desi Arnaz Jr., the son of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

The 1970s and early 1980s proved to be the peak of her career, with gigs such as a sold-out run at Carnegie Hall and a brief but wildly hyped stint as Roxie Hart in the original Broadway production of Kander & Ebb’s Chicago.

She acted with Robert De Niro in the 1977 Martin Scorsese film New York, New York, whose title song by Kander & Ebb has become an unofficial anthem for the city.

Liza and Scorsese began an affair, and he went on to direct her in the 1978 stage musical The Act, in which she was an inspiration to the young Meryl Streep.

Her second husband was Jack Haley Jr. – the son of the actor who played the Tin Man alongside Judy in The Wizard Of Oz – and the third was sculptor Mark Gero.

While married to Jack, Liza allegedly conducted overlapping affairs with Scorsese and Mikhail Baryshnikov, according to her friend Andy Warhol’s diaries.

Meanwhile, by the late 1970s, her social life had become increasingly rocked by a galloping drug problem that came to help define her image.

As a young woman, Liza initially steered clear of alcohol and drugs, having witnessed her mother’s fatal descent into addiction.

However in the 1970s she plunged into a maelstrom of hedonistic excess, indulging in substances ranging from alcohol to cocaine to Quaaludes.

Ultimately, she was able to wrench herself out of her spiral, undergoing rehab at the Betty Ford Clinic and entering Alcoholics Anonymous.

Her first stay at a treatment center came in 1984 at the behest of her sister Lorna.

In 2022, Liza was mocked online for an embarrassing appearance at the Oscars when Lady Gaga rolled her onstage in a wheelchair to present best picture.

Gaga’s cloying interactions with Liza – whispering: ‘I got you’ to her in an aside that was caught on the mic – fueled conjecture about the latter’s health.

It was later claimed Liza was ‘forced’ to go onstage in a wheelchair at the last minute, after first agreeing to appear in a director’s chair for her ‘back trouble.’ 

Minnelli was ‘sabotaged’ by the switch-up and came away feeling ‘very disappointed.

Now she has offered her own account of the fiasco, saying she ‘was inexplicably ordered – not even asked – to sit in a wheelchair or not appear at all. 

She also reflects on her glittering career, including her Oscar-winning performance in Cabaret, for which she is pictured in a publicity still

She said: ‘I was told it was because of my age, and for safety reasons, because I might slip out of the director’s chair, which was bulls***. I will not be treated this way, I said.’

She was ‘heartbroken’ by the turn events had taken, on top of which she ‘was much lower down than I would have been in the director’s chair. Now I couldn’t easily read the teleprompter above me. How would you feel if you were wheeled out, against your will, to perform in front of a live audience, and unable to see clearly?’

Liza then scathingly recalled that ‘when I stumbled over a few words, Gaga, who was at my side, didn’t miss a beat to play the kindhearted hero for all the world to see. ‘I got you,’ she said, leaning down over me.’

Gaga approached her in her dressing room after the debacle to ask: ‘Are you okay?’ to which Minnelli replied simply: ‘I’m a big fan,’ having ‘learned this lesson years ago from Mama and Papa. At a moment of high stress, you stay gracious.’