Tragic Details About Patricia Arquette

Patricia Arquette is an Oscar winner, an Emmy winner, and an outspoken activist for gender equality and trans rights. Her talent is undeniable and her candor is admirable, but both things may have come from the fact that she has led a very difficult life. From early in her childhood, Arquette was subjected to extreme physical abuse and abject poverty, but she managed to overcome these traumas to become a lauded actor with an impressive and varied resume.

When Arquette was just starting out, she saw the dark side of the entertainment industry, but she was not deterred. Instead, she continued to thrive and used her instincts to deftly navigate her career and persevere as a single mother. At the height of her acting success, Arquette suffered several heartbreaking losses, one being her beloved sister, Alexis Arquette, but she continued to use her platform to honor her late sister and advocate for others.

Patricia Arquette has not had it easy, but she is a shining example of strength in the face of adversity. Read on to learn more about the tragic details of Patricia Arquette's life, and how she managed to overcome such seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

Patricia Arquette was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1968, but when she was a young child her family relocated to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia to live on a commune. Arquette's parents had the best of intentions when moving their children to the Skymont Commune, as the actor explained to the Wall Street Journal, "They wanted to raise us in a spiritual, utopian society away from the rat race and closer to nature." But there was a dark side to life in the commune, namely the extreme poverty and the shoddy living conditions that came with it.

According to Arquette, the entire family, which included two adults and five children, lived in one room without electricity, a bathroom, or running water. "I still feel I have the heart of a poor child and an intimate understanding of what that experience is like," Arquette revealed to the Wall Street Journal, explaining that her family sometimes needed government assistance so they could eat, and they occasionally had to go without shoes.

Despite the struggle of her family's unconventional lifestyle, Arquette did gain some positive things from the experience. Living in the commune helped foster her love of nature and taught her to value life beyond material possessions. The actor also learned to enjoy her own company, something she has carried with her into adulthood. "Quiet and solitude too — I'm comfortable with quiet and solitude," she shared with The Guardian.

Childhood was tough enough for Patricia Arquette, having lived in poverty on a commune, but that wasn't even close to the worst of it. Arquette has opened up about the physical abuse she endured from both her mother, a poet, and her father, an actor. "My mom had a lot of issues, she was abusive to us when we were little," Arquette told "The Oprah Winfrey Show." "I mean she choked me to the point once where I started blacking out." Her older sister, Rosanna Arquette, who appeared on the show as well, recalled their mother stabbing her in the arm, adding, "Concussions...just terrible physical abuse."

Adding to the chaos was the fact that Patricia's father had issues with substance misuse, which fueled his outbursts when they were young, causing him to lash out violently as well. "It's like a minefield," the actor explained of their family's household. "...you never knew which one you were gonna get, which morning, which dad, which part of your mom..." Arquette revealed. "There was nothing you could really depend on."

If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.

Having spent her early years in a rural area of Virginia surrounded mostly by her siblings and family friends, moving to Los Angeles was a big culture shock for Patricia Arquette. Up until that point, she had lived a relatively sheltered life where material possessions were not merely unimportant, but difficult to obtain given her family's financial struggles.

Arquette was woefully unprepared for the importance her peers placed on things like cars and clothes. "These jeans are better than those jeans, this watch is better than that watch. I really didn't understand any of that," the actor shared with The Guardian. It was not a matter of taste, just that Arquette wasn't raised to care about such things. A classmate once asked her what kind of car of her father drove, which was confusing since she didn't understand that sort of thing being a status symbol. "I appreciate beautiful things – don't get me wrong – but I also understand it doesn't matter," Arquette explained.

Over the years, many women have shared their experiences of being on the receiving end of inappropriate behavior and sexual misconduct in Hollywood. Patricia Arquette is one of these women, but she also dealt with unwanted attention before she even became an actor. "Honestly, the grossest things that have happened to me did not happen in this business," Arquette revealed to The Guardian. "I grew up at a time when the whole world was pretty blatantly creepy."

While Arquette did not necessarily recognize her own beauty when she was in her 20s, she knew that her looks made her a target, explaining, "My beauty in the world was dangerous for me, and scary." Arquette recalled experiencing such unsavory things as "racy jokes and people commenting on your body, or even brushing past you or touching you in a certain way." The actor acknowledged that it was her inner strength that got her through those difficult situations, and felt she had no choice but to be tough in order to deal with the discomfort she felt.

Patricia Arquette has been candid over the years in speaking about the dangers she faced as woman in the entertainment industry and in the world at large. Before she was famous, the actor narrowly escaped a potentially frightening scenario when her instincts kicked in during a date.

Arquette was on a second date with pro-skateboarder Mark Rogowski, A.K.A. "Gator," when something didn't feel quite right to her. The two met through friends, and Arquette found him attractive, but she got a bad vibe from him when he kissed her. "We made out but something about how he kissed me freaked me out," she explained in response to a thread on X, formerly Twitter, about awkward dates (via E! News).

She went into further detail, explaining that this was more than just a bad kiss. "It felt aggressive," she wrote. "Like pushing me back hard with his jaw and it felt like it was angry." Arquette trusted her intuition and gave Rogowski a fake number, and it was a good thing she did. Years later, in 1991, the skater was convicted of raping and murdering his girlfriend, 22-year-old model Jessica Bergsten.

In 1989, Patricia Arquette welcomed her first child, a son named Enzo, with her musician boyfriend Paul Rossi. Arquette and Rossi ended their relationship when Enzo was just 1 month old, and although there was no bad blood between the former couple, Arquette was faced with caring for her child alone at the age of 20. It was a scary time for the actor, as she found herself struggling to make ends meet. "I was a single mom when I was 20, and there were times where I didn't know if I could buy him diapers and could buy food," she shared with HuffPost.

Arquette's financial struggles as a single mother also affected her career choices at that time, as she couldn't afford to turn down the roles that were offered to her, whether or not they were projects she was truly interested in. "I wanted to work with great directors and interesting material, but sometimes you just have to pay your rent and you go for the opportunity, whatever it is," Arquette told The Guardian. Once her career began to take off, she could be more discerning when it came to the parts she auditioned for, but when Enzo was a baby she had one goal in mind. "Making money was very important to me," the actor explained.

In the early '90s, Patricia Arquette's career was beginning to get her noticed, particularly her starring role in the 1993 film "True Romance." But being a young actor in Hollywood came with some unsavory encounters, like the one she had with director Oliver Stone.

Arquette and Stone had a meeting in which he discussed casting her in a film he was doing, one that was very sexual in nature. According to Arquette, the meeting stayed professional, but afterwards the director sent her a bouquet of roses, which didn't sit right with her. "It's not uncommon to receive flowers but something about them felt weird," Arquette said in a post on X. "I ignored it" (via People).

But that wasn't the end of it. After Stone's assistant reached out to confirm she received the flowers, Arquette was asked to attend a screening of "Natural Born Killers," Stone's controversial 1994 film. Wanting to dodge a potentially awkward encounter, she brought a boyfriend with her, and that seemed to anger Stone. "The room was packed. Oliver stopped me coming out of the bathroom," Arquette wrote in her post. "He said 'Why did you bring him?'" She confronted the director, asking him why it was an issue that she'd brought a date. She never heard from him again about the role they'd discussed, but by then she was no longer interested in working with him anyway.

Throughout the '90s and 2000s, Patricia Arquette enjoyed a successful career, appearing in many films and starring in the TV series "Medium." In 2015, Arquette was awarded an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her work in the film "Boyhood." During her acceptance speech, Arquette used her platform to call attention to the gender pay gap, stating, "...it's our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America," (via YouTube).

One year later, Arquette was interviewed on the Oscars red carpet and revealed that her speech had caused her to lose out on some roles, but that she had expected as much. "Really, before I said it, I knew there was gonna be some drama, 'cause it would cost people money," she shared with ET. Arquette took the opportunity to double down on her assertion, providing the outlet with a startling fact. "... there are 33 million women and kids that are living in poverty in America, with a full-time working mom," the actor said. "So, we need to address this and we need to address this right away."

In previous interviews Arquette was candid about the pay she'd received for "Boyhood," telling WENN, "[I] paid more money to my babysitter and my dog walker than I made on 'Boyhood'..." (via E! News). That's a very low wage, taking into account that filming for "Boyhood" began in 2002 and spanned twelve years, with actors shooting scenes one week per year.

In September of 2016, Patricia Arquette suffered a heartbreaking loss when her sister Alexis Arquette passed away from complications of HIV. Alexis, an actor who appeared in films such as "Pulp Fiction," "The Wedding Singer," and "The Bride of Chucky," among many others, was just 47 years old when she died, and her four siblings penned a heartfelt statement in the wake of her passing. "We learned what real bravery is through watching her journey of living as a trans woman. We came to discover the one truth – that love is everything," the statement, signed by Patricia, Redmond, Rosanna, and David Arquette, read in part (via People).

The following year brought more pain for the Arquette family, as Alexis was conspicuously left out of that year's Oscar's "In Memoriam" segment. "It's really unfortunate that the Oscars decided they couldn't show a trans person who was such an important person in this community. Because — trans kids — it could have meant a lot to them," Patricia told Vanity Fair.

In 2019, Patricia Arquette won an Emmy for her work in "The Act" and used her acceptance speech to pay tribute to Alexis and show support for the trans community. She later revealed that she was just beginning to process the loss of her sister, explaining that work had been a helpful distraction but having time to herself brought on grief that she had yet to contend with. "As people, we kind of act like everything's fine when sometimes it's not," the actor shared with People.

Throughout her career, Patricia Arquette has displayed incredible range as an actor, and her role in the 2019 Hulu miniseries, "The Act," was no exception. The show, which portrayed the true story of Gypsy Rose Blanchard and the abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, was difficult for viewers to watch at times, and difficult for Arquette, who played Dee Dee, to film. Getting into character was difficult for Arquette, who told Newsweek, "There were moments where it was nauseating. Even though everything was pretend, sometimes it looked so real."

Dee Dee Blanchard, who was murdered by her daughter after years of abuse, suffered from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a mental illness that caused her to fabricate various ailments for her child and seek extensive treatments for them. Arquette, who suffered abuse as a child, had a hard time conjuring Dee Dee's mindset, as she is the mother of two children herself, Enzo Rossi and Harlow Jane, who has grown up to be gorgeous. "I could never stand my kids getting hurt," the actor explained. "It really flies in the face of everything that we usually, as parents, try to do." But Arquette rallied and played the role with such intensity that she nabbed an Emmy for her portrayal.

In 2019, Patricia Arquette was dealt yet another blow when she lost her longtime friend and friend of her family, Luke Perry. Luke Perry, who starred in Hallmark movies, "Beverly Hills, 90210" and "Riverdale" was just 52 years old when he died unexpectedly of a stroke, leaving behind two children and many loved ones.

Perry's death hit Arquette especially hard because he had been extremely close with her late sister, Alexis Arquette. Patricia opened up about their bond, sharing that the tabloids would speculate that Perry was gay since he and Alexis were so close, but Perry never refuted it. "When he was asked about it later, he said, 'Well, to deny that would be saying there is something wrong with it,'" Patricia told ET, adding, "So Luke was way ahead of his time."

Perry had been friends with the Arquettes for years, even living with the family for a while as a kid. Patricia had only praise for the late actor calling him "A real quintessential kind of cowboy, all-American, exalted kind of male," adding, "In thirty years I never heard him say one bad word about anyone."

Patricia Arquette and her siblings have been through a lot together, and clearly share a very close bond. The actor is especially protective of her younger brother, David Arquette, who was married to Courteney Cox from 1999 until 2013 and shares daughter Coco Arquette, who has undergone a stunning transformation. Although David once lacked confidence due to Cox's success, he branched out from acting in the early 2000s to pursue his dream of becoming a wrestler.

David achieved his goal and then some, becoming the WCW World Heavyweight Champion in 2000, but the sport took a toll on his physical health. During a "death match" in 2018, David Arquette nearly lost his life for real when he was accidentally stabbed in the neck by wrestler Nick Gage. "I got out of the ring and I was totally lost. I couldn't see and I couldn't hear," he shared with People about the accident.

Despite the frightening experience, he decided to continue wrestling, much to his sister Patricia's dismay. "...it really scares me," she shared during an appearance on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" in 2019. "So, I actually don't watch the matches because it would terrify me too much." Patricia also revealed that her brother had suffered a heart attack a year or so prior, which made his wrestling career feel that much more dangerous. "...it is scary, you know? I mean he is older now," the actor said.