One of Hollywoods hottest stars walked away from his baby at just 7 months old!
Eric Roberts had everything Hollywood wanted in the 1980s: dangerous charm, magnetic intensity, and a smoldering screen presence that made casting directors see him as the next big thing. Born in 1956 in Biloxi, Mississippi, he grew up in an artistic but turbulent environment that shaped both his talent and his inner chaos. By his twenties, he was already turning heads on Broadway before exploding onto the Hollywood scene with roles in King of the Gypsies, Star 80, and Runaway Train, earning Golden Globe nods and a reputation as a brilliant, unpredictable force.
But while his career climbed, his personal life unraveled. Fame fueled his addictions, and addiction fueled the destruction of nearly everything else in his world.
On February 10, 1991, his daughter Emma Roberts was born. Instead of becoming the anchor that grounded him, her arrival collided with a period of deep instability. His relationship with Emma’s mother, Kelly Cunningham, collapsed under the weight of drug use and volatility. Kelly took full custody — and Eric didn’t contest it.
Years later in his memoir Runaway Train, Eric wrote bluntly:
“I had abandoned Kelly when Emma was just seven months old. I couldn’t handle the realities of an infant coming into my life, and I couldn’t handle being a parent.”
Public speculation intensified when tabloids dragged his sister Julia Roberts into the story, painting a dramatic feud that never existed. Eric later clarified that Julia simply helped Kelly financially because she could — and because it was the right thing for Emma. There was no custody battle. No betrayal. Just a man too deep in addiction to be the father his daughter needed.
As Eric drifted through the 1990s in a haze, Emma spent her childhood surrounded by creativity — visiting sets with her mother and hiding in Aunt Julia’s makeup trailer like it was her personal hideout. That early exposure would eventually shape her own Hollywood journey, even as the absence of her father left a quiet, painful void.