11 Celebrities Who Have Complicated Relationships with Their Children

Rory Feek, Brad Pitt and Elon Musk are among the celebrity parents who have strained relationships with their children

Fame can complicate parent-child dynamics.

Several celebrities have had public disputes with their children. Elon Musk's estranged daughter, Vivian Wilson, clapped back at her father after his disparaging comments about her transition. Meanwhile, Rory Feek's daughters Heidi and Hopie Feek accused him of cutting them off from seeing their 10-year-old sister, Indiana.

See why these 11 celebrities have developed complicated relationships with their kids, including Brad Pitt and his four adult children and Tom Cruise and his daughter Suri, whom he had with ex-wife Katie Holmes.

Rory Feek

In an interview with PEOPLE in August, Heidi and Hopie Feek said that they were considering legal action against their father Rory Feek, claiming he had cut them off from contacting their 10-year-old sister Indiana. They detailed how Rory canceled Indiana's visits to them in Alabama, limited the time they had with her and eventually, stopped responding to texts.

Heidi also expressed concerns about Indiana's safety, alleging she was left unsupervised and wandered into traffic.

"Instead of addressing the danger she was in, my dad used this traumatic incident to create content that boosted his public image," she says.

Rory responded on Aug. 31 with a blog post titled "love, dad" that said her claims "broke" his heart and that Indiana "has never been more loved or better cared for than she is right now."

A few weeks later, he wrote another blog post, "canceled," which detailed his attempt to visit Heidi and Hopie in Alabama to smooth things over. When he arrived at their front door, nobody answered, despite their cars sitting in the driveway.

“There are things that my older daughters and I need to work out together,” he wrote. “Right now we’re at an impasse on how that’s ever going to happen.”

Heidi told PEOPLE after the incident that although she wasn't home, her husband and Hopie were. Upon realizing that Rory had showed up unannounced, Hopie began having a panic attack.

"Regardless of the intention, it came off as intimidating. We’ve set really clear boundaries. We have such a hard time communicating with him and feeling heard that we really don’t feel like it’s possible without a third party,” said Heidi.

Brad Pitt

A source close to Brad Pitt told PEOPLE in July that he has "virtually no contact" with his adult children — whom he shares with ex-wife Angelina Jolie — Maddox, Pax, Zahara and Shiloh. He still has visitation rights to see his minor children, Vivienne and Knox; Jolie "has the kids most of the time, but per their agreement, he has visitation with the younger kids," the insider said.

Shiloh filed to drop "Pitt" from her surname in June, a decision of which Pitt was "aware and upset." (Zahara and Vivienne have also indicated that they don't use the last name Pitt publicly.)

"The reminders that he’s lost his children are of course not easy for Brad. He loves his children and misses them. It’s very sad," the insider added.

Elon Musk

One of Elon Musk's six children with ex-wife Justine Wilson, a transgender woman named Vivian Wilson, fired back at her father after Musk said on a streamed sit-down with a psychologist that she was "killed by the woke mind virus."

Speaking to NBC News in July, Wilson said, "I think he was under the assumption that I wasn’t going to say anything and I would just let this go unchallenged ... Which I’m not going to do, because if you’re going to lie about me, like, blatantly to an audience of millions, I’m not just gonna let that slide."

The 20-year-old also stated that Musk was there "maybe 10% of the time" during her childhood; on Threads, she responded to a tweet from Musk that talked about her behavior as a child by saying, "This entire thing is completely made up and there’s a reason for this. He doesn’t know what I was like as a child because he quite simply wasn’t there."

In August, Wilson described her dad as "a serial adulterer" and a liar, refuting what she saw as an attempt to pose as a "caring paternal father."

“You single-handedly disillusioned me with how gullible we are as a species,” she wrote in a series of Threads posts, “because somehow people keep believing you for reasons that continue to evade me.”

Kate Gosselin

In September 2024, Collin Gosselin accused his mother Kate Gosselin of abuse that began when he was 8 or 9 years old. He alleged to The Sun that Kate "became physically aggressive, verbally, very abusive with the things she would say" and kept him contained in a basement room with a camera and mattress for most of the day.

Kate sent Collin to a Fairmount Behavioral Health System institution in Philadelphia in 2016 for what she later claimed to be "unpredictable and violent behavior."

He alleged in an interview with Entertainment Tonight that because Kate institutionalized him, he was discharged from the Marines before he graduated from training camp.

PEOPLE reached out to Kate and her attorney for comment on the abuse allegations, and her attorney told The Sun that he didn't believe that Kate had done anything to "intentionally harm" her son and that "she did what she did to protect herself and her family" from what he called "troubled behavior."

His older sister Madelyn spoke out against him in July 2023, alleging that Collin had physically threatened her and her immediate family "as recent as last year" and stating, "I will never allow someone who has exhibited hateful and even violent behavior toward others based on their racial identity, gender identity, or religious beliefs to be in my life."

Kate doubled down on her belief that Collin was mentally ill and told PEOPLE in an exclusive statement in 2023, "For the safety of myself, his brothers and sisters and for his own well-being, he was placed in a facility following years of outpatient treatment which proved insufficient for his needs."

Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes welcomed their daughter Suri in 2006, but the couple split in 2012 after five years of marriage. Since then, Suri has lived with Holmes in New York City, and has not been seen publicly with Cruise in nearly a decade.

Though it's unclear the exact status of Suri’s relationship with her father, in 2024, when she graduated from high school in New York City, the graduation program listed her name as "Suri Noelle" instead of "Suri Cruise," and Cruise remained in London that weekend to attend Taylor Swift's Eras Tour.

Billy Ray Cyrus from Miley Cyrus

Since Billy Ray Cyrus and longtime wife Tish Cyrus announced their divorce in 2022, there have been rumors of a rift within the family that includes the couple’s five kids, Miley Cyrus, Noah Cyrus, Brandi Cyrus, Trace Cyrus and Braison Cyrus. (Billy Ray has another son, Christopher Cody Cyrus, from a previous relationship who has remained out of the spotlight.)

In February 2024, while accepting the Grammy for record of the year, Miley made no mention of her dad, pointedly joking, "I don't think I forgot anyone. But I might have forgotten underwear. Bye!"

That summer, Miley opened up about her relationship with her parents on My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman and shared that while she has a "lot of love" for her dad, in terms of how both parents impacted her career, said they “can’t be weighed on the same scale."

"I mean, honestly, my mom is my hero,” she said elsewhere in the conversation.

When Letterman asked directly about the rumored strife, saying "There's not estrangement here with your father, it's just the way things are played?" Miley responded: "Yeah, I think, what is so beautiful is that my parents, they served their children, and I know this. My parents served us and sacrificed so much for us. Anything we dreamed of, they made possible."

Cher from Elijah Blue Allman

Cher’s youngest son, Elijah Blue Allman, has long had a complicated relationship with his famous mom.

“He and I have such a bizarre relationship. We've had so many strange moments,” Cher said during an appearance on Dr. Phil in 2004.” I don't really understand him. Somehow Elijah and I kind of talk through osmosis.”

In December 2023, though, Cher filed for a temporary conservatorship over  Elijah’s estate due to his alleged substance abuse and declining mental health. Earlier that year, the two had made headlines when amid divorce proceedings, Elijah’s wife Marieangela King alleged that Cher had hired four men to kidnap her son from a New York City hotel room in 2022.

Cher told PEOPLE in 2023 of the allegations, "That rumor is not true.”

Cher and her son later reached a private agreement, and Cher voluntarily dismissed her petition for conservatorship in September 2024.

Anthony Hopkins from Abigail Hopkins

Anthony Hopkins shares one daughter, Abigail, with his ex-wife Petronella Barker. The actor reportedly left when Abigail was a toddler though the two had a brief reconciliation in the 1990s and she made a few small cameos in his films Shadowlands and The Remains of the Day. In the years since, though, the two lost touch.

In 2018, when asked in an interview Radio Times if Abigail had made him a grandfather, Anthony said “I don’t have any idea.”

“People break up,” he said, per The Telegraph. “Families split and, you know, ‘Get on with your life.’ People make choices. I don’t care one way or the other.”

Following the interview, Hopkins went on to explain to the U.K. newspaper The Times that he “wasn’t cold.”

“You know, I did the best I could, but you know, okay, I think if somebody doesn’t want to be part of my life, fine. Go and do whatever you want,” he told the outlet. “I wish her well and all that, but I don’t want to talk about my daughter. Those things are over.”

Abigail had previously spoken about her relationship with her father sharing that she’d see him “maybe once a year” as a child.

“There is a little bit of sadness, but I have to get on with my life,”  she said in a 2006 interview with The Telegraph. “It has always been like that. See him, and then not.”

At the time she said she would “possibly” be open to it, but it “would have to be a two-way thing.”

“I don’t know how I would feel about it,” she added. “We have never really been close. We’ve never discussed big life issues. Because, well, our relationship was always so sporadic. I’ve never felt I could discuss those sort of things with him.”

Woody Allen from Dylan and Ronan Farrow

Ronan and Dylan Farrow have both spoken out against their father, Woody Allen, in the years after his dramatic split from their mom Mia Farrow. In a 2014 op-ed published in The New York Times, Dylan publicly addressed accusations that Allen sexually abused her as a child for the first time. The piece came out after her father's latest Oscar nomination, and Dylan called out the industry for refusing to acknowledge his allegations of sexual abuse and assault.

"After a custody hearing denied my father visitation rights, my mother declined to pursue criminal charges, despite findings of probable cause by the State of Connecticut – due to, in the words of the prosecutor, the fragility of the 'child victim,' " she wrote at the time.

Two years later, Ronan penned an article in The Hollywood Reporter coming out in full support of his sister. The guest column raised concerns over journalists avoiding tough questions about sexual misconduct allegations in fear of retribution from powerful publicists.

"I believe my sister. This was always true as a brother who trusted her, and, even at 5 years old, was troubled by our father’s strange behavior around her," he wrote.

Allen maintains that the allegations were baseless. In a 2021 interview with Variety, he cites how two "major" investigations looked into the situation and "came to the exact same conclusion" that there was "no merit to these charges."

When asked if he had seen Dylan or Ronan recently, he answered: "No. Always willing to but no, no…."

Farrow is also estranged from her daughter Soon-Yi, with whom Allen had an affair in the early 1990s that led to his divorce from Farrow. "He's weaponized two of my children that he's turned against me," she said, referring to Soon-Yi and her and Allen’s son Moses, who backed Soon-Yi's claim that Mia was abusive to them. (Soon-Yi responded that Mia, Dylan and Ronan are sharing a false narrative about Allen.)

Eric Roberts and Emma Roberts

Eric Roberts couldn't wait to welcome little Emma with ex Kelly Cunningham. However, the Fractured actor admitted he simply wasn't ready for the massive responsibilities that came with fatherhood.

"I loved my little daughter with the strength of Hercules, despite my own weaknesses," the actor wrote in his memoir, Runaway Train: Or the Story of My Life So Far. "However, I couldn’t handle the realities of an infant coming into my life, and I couldn’t handle being a parent! I’m still not a father figure."

Roberts' addiction struggles led to him losing custody of his daughter, and their relationship still is strained; he recently said he's not supposed to talk about her publicly. But he has also shared that he is proud of her career and her role as a mother to her son, Rhodes.

Prince Charles

Prince Harry has had a difficult relationship with his family since leaving London in 2020, which he said he did in an effort to protect his wife Meghan Markle and children from the U.K. press.

And while his relationship with his father had improved slightly after the two met in February following the King's cancer diagnosis, a source told PEOPLE that the pair were no longer speaking back in July.

"He gets 'unavailable right now,' " said a friend of Harry’s. "His calls go unanswered. He has tried to reach out about the King's health, but those calls go unanswered too."

The Duke of Sussex has been fighting for the reinstatement of security for his family for more than four years and believes Charles has the power to help make that happen. However, a palace source told PEOPLE the notion that Charles has any influence over Harry's security is "wholly incorrect."

If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.

If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse, text "STRENGTH" to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.

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