Ione Skye has finally confirmed what fans have suspected for decades: she truly did hook up with John Cusack.
Believe it or not, it wasn’t on the set of the 1989 rom-com Say Anything, when Cusack and Skye’s characters fall madly in love. It was actually years later, according to Skye’s new memoir Say Everything, after she divorced her first husband in 2000.
“I had to get it out of my system,” she writes, according to People, which obtained an excerpt of the book, out Tuesday.
Not only does the 51-year-old dish the dirty details on Cusack, but she reveals juicy tea on a host of famous friends, family, and foes: River Phoenix, Keanu Reeves, Matthew Perry, Madonna, Sofia Coppola, her folk singer father Donovan, and Beastie Boy ex Adam Horovitz.
Skye admitted that although she’s “a little nervous” for her book’s debut, she felt that she had to open up eventually. The book addresses her tumultuous teen relationships, bisexuality, and numerous affairs.
Skye started acting as a young teen, and first tried to seduce a young Keanu Reeves (while he was in the shower) on the set of 1986 movie River’s Edge.
Another of her other earliest crushes was on longtime friend River Phoenix. The two starred in A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon together in 1988.
“I remember at the time thinking, ‘Oh I’m in love with him!‘” she said. “I couldn’t wait to do my kissing scene with him. He was just delicious.”
Her off-stage love affairs were a little more chaotic. When she was still 16, Skye dated rockstar Anthony Kiedis, who was eight years her senior. Although the two were “instantly enmeshed,” wrote Skye, the relationship was rocky.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers lead singer had a severe heroin addiction. Skye used to drive around for entire nights looking for him while he was on “rampages that lasted for three days or so.”
Skye got pregnant while dating Kiedis, and eventually had an abortion. Kiedis is now sober but the two don’t stay in touch. He hasn’t read the book, either.
When Skye was only 18, she met the “great first love of my life.” Adam Horovitz, now known as “Ad-Rock,” was a Beastie Boys star. The couple’s first kiss was “terribly romantic” and they got married when she was only 21. They were one of the hottest “it” couples in the ’90s.
But Skye was restless—and at the time, monogamy just wasn’t for her.
“I was a serial cheater,” she wrote, adding that it was likely due to deep insecurity. Throughout her many flings, she explored her sexuality, including through her steamy affair with runway model Jenny Shimizu—who also dated Madonna and Angelina Jolie. Skye said that Shimizu was a “masterful” and “dominant” lover and their “safe word” in bed was “London.”
She and Madonna seem to have a similar type, because Skye also dated another of the singer’s exes, socialite Ingrid Casares.
Skye also had a secret fling with Friends star Matthew Perry, who she got a “sober drink” with in the midst of their similar addiction recoveries. Although she said she normally didn’t accept booty calls, ”it was Matthew Perry!"
Perry tragically died at only 54 in October 2023, he sent one final text to Skye before passing away. “I was meditating (I meditate now) and ‘In Your Eyes’ started playing. And I instantly thought of you and how beautiful you are,” he wrote.
After all the infidelity, Skye and Horovitz eventually split, and she got her “ADAM” tattoo changed to “MADAME” as a divorce present.
Although she’s had a stable relationship for the last 16 years with Australian musician Ben Lee, she’s happy to reminisce on her younger, more scandalous years.
And although she claims she and Cusack “were meant to be in love only in the movies,” Cusack might not feel the same.
After reading the memoir he texted her: “You made the experience sound so meh! It wasn’t ‘meh’ for me.”
