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Liza Minnelli Says Taking Care of Mom Judy Garland Gave Her ‘Patience’: ‘I Was a Big Comfort to Her’
Liza Minnelli and Judy Garland’s roles were reversed when the Cabaret star was just 13 years old, she writes in her upcoming memoir, Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!
“I was my mother’s caretaker — a nurse, doctor, pharmacologist and psychiatrist rolled into one,” Minnelli, 79, explains in the book, per People.
However, Minnelli said that taking care of the Wizard of Oz star changed her perspective on things.
“It gave me more patience. Listening, as opposed to pretending you’re listening, really listening for what somebody’s trying to get across,” she told the outlet in an interview published on Monday, March 2.
“So, with my mom, I think about what she went through every day, how she felt,” she added. “I was a big comfort to her.”
“My parents were extraordinary,” the Broadway star added of Garland and her director dad, Vincente Minnelli. “My father would talk to me like a real person, almost like an adult, but somebody you had to explain something to. And Mama had been pushed around so much. You try growing up at MGM. Horrendous, but she was funny.”
“Everybody has problems with their mother,” she added. “It ain’t just me — and you know it.”
Minnelli’s Kids, Wait Till You Hear This, which she wrote with her friend, Michael Feinstein, will be released March 10 and can be preordered now wherever books are sold.
