Zoë Kravitz Opens Up About Moving from Lisa Bonet’s Home to Live with Dad Lenny

Zoë Kravitz is opening up about her childhood.

In a candid new interview with Esquire, the actress turned director discussed her experiences being raised by her superstar parents—Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz—and the difficult decision she made to live with her father after her parents’ split.

“It was this whirlwind of a completely different universe,” Kravitz, who initially lived with her mother Lisa, said of dad Lenny’s visits.

At the height of his career, Kravitz found her dad’s life intoxicating and her time with him equally so, making it difficult to return to a “really quiet, really simple life” with her mom.

When Kravitz was eleven, she relocated to Miami to be with her father.

Describing it as both wonderful and overwhelming, Kravitz said her dad allowed her to explore everything—and she did.

“It wasn’t that my dad didn’t care. He just cared about different things,” she said, adding that the rockstar lifestyle made her grow up fast.

“Just like it happens in the movies,” she recalled. “It’s like, ‘Oh, you think this is perfect? You think this is great? Guess what comes with this.'”

The fast-paced lifestyle, coupled with a struggle to fit into a community where she felt she stood out—Kravitz is Jewish and Black—she urged her dad to move to New York, where she finally found her people.

Enrolling in the Rudolf Steiner School, Kravitz said she and her classmates shared common ground.

“It was weirdos like me,” she said, recalling her time in the drama club. “I wasn’t some genius actress. I felt safe.”

Kravitz’s life was still busier and bolder than the average teen, often finding fun in the city’s local haunts.

“I don’t even know where I was going, but I was going out,” she said, often spending time out and about while her dad was on tour and relatives served as her guardians.

But looking back, Kravitz said she feels guilty about her decision to leave her mother.

“I think it was very hurtful that I moved away from her to be with my dad and my dad wasn’t even there,” she told the outlet.

But it’s not that she wishes she’d stayed.

“I just wish I had been able to appreciate what she was doing for me,” she noted. “She was so focused on preserving my innocence, my creativity. Because she knew what the world is—that you don’t get that back.”

“I definitely found myself in situations I didn’t need to be in,” Kravitz added, reflecting on her younger days. “You want to grow up so fast, and then you get out there and you realize, oh s–t.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Kravitz touched on her relationship with fiancé Channing Tatum, whom she met while working on her directorial debut, Blink Twice.

While the pair are planning their wedding—and no, it’s not in the next year, despite her dad’s comments in interviews—Kravitz said she’s still undecided about having children.

“For a long time, I felt like there was something wrong with me,” she said. “I was waiting for this light to go off in my head, and it never did. When you’re younger, you’re like, ‘Well, I can’t have kids. I’m too young! It’d be crazy.'”

“But then one day, you aren’t too young anymore,” Kravitz continued. “And it wouldn’t be crazy. I had to actually look at what do I want?”

Tatum, meanwhile, is already a dad to daughter Everly, 10, whom he shares with ex-wife Jenna Dewan.

And though their relationship is fairly fresh, it truly blossomed on the set of this thriller, which is the baby Kravitz said she feels like she just gave birth to.

“There’s a lot of pressure on women to have children, and there’s a feeling that if you don’t, you don’t have purpose here. But this movie, it feels like I gave birth,” she added.

See Kravitz’s directorial debut when Blink Twice hits theaters August 23.

Source: Esquire