‘The Great Peace,’ by Mena Suvari.

Gulf Today Report

Mena Suvari says she has no doubt that her soul-baring memoir “The Great Peace” was important, even necessary, for her to write. But that doesn’t mean she’s not terrified about what people will think when they read about the darkness and despair of her life.

In films such as “American Pie” and “American Beauty,” Suvari found fame before she was out of her teens, but she writes she was living a double life — her life offscreen mired in toxic relationships, physical abuse, and substance abuse to numb the pain and trauma, according to TNS.

“I mean, this is my most vulnerable,” the 42-year-old actress says. “This is sort of like my therapy with the world, you know?” She continues, saying she felt compelled to write it. “I’ve always wanted to give back. I’ve always wanted to help” she says. “I guess I’m just doing that in the most authentic way now.”

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“The Great Peace” takes its name from a book of poetry and other personal writing that Suvari made for herself as a teen. Discovering it in her storage locker three years ago — and then reading a long-forgotten suicide note she’d written that was tucked inside the back cover — triggered her self-examination.

She says her performance as a true-life, terminally ill cancer patient in the recent film “Grace and Grit” inspired her as well. “The way that project affected me, I think it just projected me into doing even more soul-searching, and ultimately, I just felt ready,” Suvari says. “There have been many moments in my life when I’ve been ready to make a change, where I’ve just become absolutely exhausted, and something has to give.”

 Mena Suvari poses for a portrait. TNS 

One day, not long after finishing the film, she went into her office and started to write down all the stories she’d kept stuffed down and out of reach for years. “I used that moment for about six hours to just pour everything out onto about eight or 10 pages,” Suvari says.

The secret life that had given her so much shame and disgust, had to come into the light, she says. “For me, it was just feeling that I needed to finally breathe and just move, move onto the next stage of my life.” “The Great Peace” recalls some very tough times for Suvari. After a largely idyllic childhood spent in a mansion in Rhode Island, St. John in the US Virgin Islands, and Charleston, South Carolina, Suvari writes that she was badly abused by a teenage family friend. She was 12. A few years later, the family’s finances diminished, she moved with her mother and father to a Burbank apartment to pursue a career as a teen actress and model.  Before she was 18, she met a man she calls Tyler in the book, and moved in with him for the next few years, the period during which she landed her first big role in “American Pie.” Tyler, she writes, physically and emotionally abused her, but because she lacked a sense of self-worth she didn’t break free for years. “I just truly believed I had nowhere else to go,” Suvari says. “I hope I could inspire someone else to believe that really there is somewhere else. Because you see that I did eventually get out.

“If I’d seen that, if I’d had that hope or been inspired earlier, maybe it would have happened earlier for me,” she says. The Tyler years might have been the worst, but even after him, Suvari writes of lacking the self-esteem and awareness to believe she deserved the love and respect that most of her relationships lacked. Eventually, as she found the ability to tell loved ones her true story, she built better romantic relationships, including her 2018 marriage to Michael Hope. “It’s a completely new beginning,” Suvari says. “I try to look for every opportunity and every moment to see how I can grow.” Not long after finishing the book, Suvari discovered she was pregnant with her first child, a son born in April, a joyful distraction from revisiting the past that she explores in the book. “There’s still an immense amount of pain wrapped around a lot of these moments, and a huge amount of trauma,” Suvari says. “That’s something that I’m still addressing every single day of my life. For sure. “I mean, this is extremely difficult,” she says. “I had to last month record the audiobook — that was embarrassing. The technicians and everyone listening in, and I’m choked up because I can’t read these things.” Soon, though, she plans to get back on set or location for her next movie or TV project.

“I’ve had the opportunity to play motherly roles; now I have, obviously, a new understanding of that,” she says. “Something that I’ve never really been able to do, that I’d love to, is just have a long life on a show. I think it would be really fun to have a few years with a character.” She feels stronger now, too. “I don’t want to be the victim and I don’t want someone to feel bad for me,” Suvari says. “I don’t want to feel bad for myself. I just want to have conversations around these things, and talk about things that we can do better.” “For me, this is sort of saying thank you,” she says. “This is my ode to the universe and now I’m ready for this next chapter in my life.”