“He’s A Pathetic Man-Child”: 12 Celebrity Kids Who Publicly Cut Off Their Famous Parents

The last time Suri Cruise was publicly seen with her father, she was tiny enough to fit in his arms.

The father-daughter duo have been estranged for well over a decade after her parents, the Mission Impossible star and actress Katie Holmes, divorced when she was six.

Last year, the offspring of the two famous stars dropped her father’s last name and chose the name Suri Noelle to “praise her mother.”

“She is showing praise for her mother by using her middle name,” a source told Page Six, and speculated whether the 19-year-old made the name change because she “wants her own identity.” 

It was unclear whether she legally made the change to her name, but used the moniker on different occasions, including her graduation from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts last year.

Born as Tanner Elle Schneider, Elle King decided to change her name as part of her effort to distance herself from her father, Rob Schneider.

“I wanted to be my own person. I never wanted to borrow money from anybody, and I've worked hard for my family and for me,” she told People in 2023. “I want to have a life built for myself, and I want to know that I did it.”

The Ex’s & Oh’s singer grew up with her mother, London King, in Ohio, and said she barely saw her father during her childhood.

“He wasn't even in my life. He got married and had a kid, and we weren't even talking,” she said.

She said on Bunnie XO's Dumb Blonde podcast in 2024 that her comedian father sent her to “fat camp” as a child.

“I was, like, a really, really heavy child," she said. "My dad sent me to fat camp. And then I got in trouble one year because I sprained my ankle and I didn't lose any weight. Very toxic and very silly,” she said.

The singer also recalled feeling like she was getting in the way of her father’s work whenever he took her to film sets.

“I don't want to be associated with him,” she said on the podcast.

Rob Schneider addressed his relationship with Elle on the Tucker Carlson Show podcast last year and asked her for forgiveness.

“I want to just tell my daughter: Elle, I love you, and I wish I was the father of my 20s that that you needed. I clearly wasn’t, and I hope you can forgive me for my shortcomings,” he said.

The actor said he felt “terrible” about how his daughter felt and apologized to Elle.

“I love her. And all I want for her is to be happy and to heal from this,” he said on the show. “I apologize completely for and accept responsibility for not being the parent that I am now with my new kids. She didn’t get that, and I missed a lot.”

Elle didn’t seem willing to accept her father’s apology and told People last year, “I think an apology on Tucker Carlson is like a double negative, right? Means nothing.”

Frances Bean Cobain has had a tumultuous childhood from the moment she was born to Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain.

She was removed from her famous parents’ custody shortly after her birth due to an explosive 1992 Vanity Fair article that claimed Courtney took illegal substances during her pregnancy. But the investigation was dismissed, and baby Frances was returned home.

Frances was only 20 months old when her father, the frontman of Nirvana, took his own life. 

In 2003, Courtney lost custody of her daughter when she was arrested for breaking into her then-boyfriend’s home and causing a scene. She had a brief stint in rehab before regaining custody of her daughter.

Years later, Frances filed for a restraining order against her mother in 2009, claiming they got into a physical fight.

At the time, 17-year-old Frances testified that her mother’s behavior led to the passing of their two pets due to her “hoarding” and reliance on illicit substances.

She “exists on … Xanax, Adderall, Sonata and Abilify, sugar and cigarettes,” the teen said, adding that she “rarely eats.”

“She often falls asleep in her bed while she is s*****g, and I am constantly worried that she will start a fire (which she has done at least three times) that will threaten our lives,” she added.

Frances was also never comfortable with inheriting her father’s massive fortune because she didn’t “earn” it.

“It's almost like this big, giant loan that I'll never get rid of,” she said on the RuPaul: What's the Tee? Podcast in 2019. “I have an almost foreign relationship to it or guilt because it feels like money from somebody that I've never met, let alone earned myself.”

With time, she said she has been rebuilding her relationship with her mother and called their new phase the “era of balance.”

“When my mom is on a right and healthy path, she is one of the most fulfilling, beautiful, intelligent and kind people I ever met,” she said on the podcast.

After Miley’s parents, Tish and Billy Ray Cyrus, announced their divorce in 2022, the split caused a deep rift within the Cyrus family.

“The divorce between her parents has put a strain on [Miley’s] relationship with her dad and it’s been hard to connect with him in the last year,” a source told E! News in 2022.

The divorce also reportedly “caused a rift” between Miley and her sibling Noah, who has “always been close with Billy Ray.”

After the Wrecking Ball singer won her first Grammy award in 2024, the absence of her father’s name in her acceptance speech was seen as a snub to him.

“He’s tried reaching out to Miley many times and congratulated her on her Grammys,” the insider told Us Weekly in 2024. “The kids have chosen sides, but friends are hoping the rift doesn’t last forever. Miley and Billy Ray are on the outs. Miley’s very close with her mom and is standing by her.”

Following the public feud, Miley said this year that her family was going through a “dark decade.”

“Half of us weren't speaking to each other at one point, and we cleaned all that up,” she told Monica Lewinsky on her podcast Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky. 

She then said the family spent time “putting those lines of communication back together” over the past year.

“That was a really important part of my year this year, was all of my family putting those lines of communication back together,” she added. “A lot because of, you know, I had a lot of loyalty to my mom [Tish Cyrus], the way that families do when parents get divorced.” 

Brooklyn Beckham quietly hit mute on the Beckham family, but his absence was loud at major family events like his father’s milestone 50th birthday and knighthood ceremony over the past year.

Reports claimed that tensions flared between Brooklyn’s wife, Nicola Peltz, and his mother, Victoria Beckham, during their 2022 wedding.

Singer Marc Anthony performed at the reception and first called Brooklyn to the stage. He “then announced, ‘The most beautiful woman in the room tonight, come on up…Victoria Beckham!’” a source told People.

The moment allegedly left Nicola upset.

She “felt that Victoria ruined her wedding, and couldn’t understand why,” the source claimed.

Another insider said, “It was such a jaw-dropping moment that it left the whole room in absolute shock—you could hear a pin drop.”

The air grew even more tense when Victoria allegedly began slow dancing with her son, prompting “Nicola [to] run from the room crying.”

“It wasn’t appropriate,” the source said about the mother-son dance.

After tensions appeared to escalate over the last year, Brooklyn recently addressed the rumored feud in the family.

“There's always going to be people saying negative things,” he told the Daily Mail in September, “but I have a very supportive wife.”

“Me and her, we just do our thing, we just keep our heads down and work. And we're happy,” he added.

Sources claimed in October that Brooklyn “has no interest in mending things” with his family.

“He’s really focused on living a peaceful, drama-free life with Nicola,” a source told Us Weekly. “They’ve built their own world together and are very content in it. They want to let things settle naturally rather than trying to fix something that still feels tense.”

Although Brooklyn seems to be keeping a distance, his parents, Victoria and soccer legend David Beckham, have been trying to reconcile, especially in light of the holiday season.

“It’s like the ghost of Brooklyn is hanging over their Christmas and New Year’s celebrations,” an insider told The Sun. 

“Last year they were all together like one big happy family and this year couldn’t be more different,” they added.

The insider claimed Victoria and David “miss him dearly” and are “no longer afraid” to say that they “would love to be part of his life.”

Abigail Hopkins considered ending her own life because of her fractured relationship with her father, Anthony Hopkins.

“I came very close to k*****g myself,” she told the Telegraph in 2006 about her teenage years. 

“It was the worst time I can remember. I totally a****d my mind and body [with a*****l and amphetamines],” she continued. “The root cause was the fact that my father and I had an intermittent relationship when I was young. I was angry and there was a lot of grieving going on.”

Anthony Hopkins walked out on his first wife, British actress Petronella Barker, and their only child, Abigail, when she was just about a year old.

“Aside from sending financial support, I didn’t have contact with Petronella and Abigail for a few years after that,” the Oscar winner wrote in his memoir We Did OK, Kid, which was released last month.

“It is the saddest fact of my life, and my greatest regret, and yet I feel absolutely sure that it would have been much worse for everyone if I’d stayed,” he added.

Although he tried to make amends when she was nine, he recalled having an awkward encounter when they reunited. He also described her as being distant when they interacted during her teen years.

“Abigail never seemed able to forgive me for leaving the family when she was a baby. She had her reasons. I can’t blame her for that,” the actor added.

“It broke my heart,” he said about their estrangement. 

The father-daughter duo had an on-and-off relationship over the years, which Abigail described as “so sporadic.”

“We have never really been close,” she said in her 2006 interview with the Telegraph, despite having cameos in his movies Shadowlands and The Remains of the Day.

In his memoir released this year, Anthony said his door “is always open” for Abigail and wants her to be “well and happy.”

“I will always be sorry for hurting her when I left the family, even as I believe to this day that I had no choice,” he wrote.

Emma Roberts hasn’t said much over the years about her strained relationship with her father, actor Eric Roberts.

But Eric said losing her was the “biggest consequence” of his reliance on illicit substances.

The actor said he lost custody of her because of his use of substances, even when she was a baby.

“The pregnancy was very exciting. I fell madly in love with Emma the first minute I saw her,” he wrote in his 202r memoir Runaway Train: Or the Story of My Life So Far.

“The biggest consequence of my d**g use was losing Emma,” he added. “I was still impossibly coked up when she was born, which explains everything.”

Despite their difficult relationship, Eric said he was proud of his daughter’s acting and said watching her onscreen has been “so much fun.”

“She's never had any training, so she's been on-the-job training her whole career, and it's been lovely for me to watch her become an actor, and she has. I love her work,” he previously told the Hollywood Reporter about the American Horror Story actress.

Shortly after her father, Jon Voight, claimed she had “mental problems” in 2002, Angelina Jolie said she didn’t want to publicly talk about the reasons behind the “bad relationship” she had with her father.

“I would have loved to have had a warm and loving relationship with our dad,” she said in a statement at the time. “After all these years, I have determined that it is not healthy for me to be around my father.”

The same year, the Maria star legally dropped her Oscar-winning father’s name, “Voight,” from her own name and didn’t speak to him for years.

“My father and I don't speak,” she told Premiere in 2004.

She said in the same interview that the amount of “tears shed” and the amount of “screaming matches” she experienced while growing up were “simply not healthy.”

“I don't hold any anger toward him,” she added. “I don't believe that somebody's family becomes their blood… When I had the final argument/disappointment with my father—we've had many off and on—I had thought we were breaking ground, and I realized we simply weren't.”

Years later, Angelina appeared to reconcile with her father in the wake of her split from ex-husband Brad Pitt.

“He’s been very good at understanding [that my kids] needed their grandfather at this time,” she told Vanity Fair in 2017. “...He knows kind of the rule — don’t make them play with you. Just be a cool grandpa who’s creative, and hang out and tell stories and read a book in the library.”

Brad Pitt’s six children, Maddox, now 24, Pax, 21, Zahara, 20, Shiloh, 19, and 17-year-old twins Vivienne and Knox, seemingly turned against him after his bitter divorce battle with ex-wife Angelina Jolie.

The Fight Club star has “made several efforts to reconnect with his kids,” a source told Us Weekly in July this year.

The source said he “periodically” sees his teenage twins but has a “strained” relationship with the rest of his kids.

“It’s caused him a lot of heartbreak,” the source said. “He’s known to process things quietly and privately.”

Last year, 17-year-old Vivienne dropped the name “Pitt” in the playbill for The Outsiders, a musical she worked on with her mother.

She followed in the footsteps of her older sibling, Zahara, who introduced herself as “Zahara Marley Jolie” while joining the Mu Pi chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority at Spelman College last year.

The moves to seemingly distance themselves from their father have been “heartbreaking,” a source told In Touch Weekly.

“The implication is that they want nothing to do with Brad,” they added.

Hailey Bieber said she “built [her] own” family as she seemingly grew distant from her biological one in recent years.

“I’m not super close with my family at this point in my life because I feel like I’m very independent,” she told W Magazine in July last year.

The daughter of actor Stephen Baldwin and graphic designer Kennya Deodato Baldwin said she started building her career as a model at the age of 17 and moved to New York, making her own money and living on her own.

“I’m my own individual now, and I’ve built my own family,” she added. “But when I look back on my childhood and how I grew up, I have very fond, beautiful memories.” 

The Rhode founder and her husband Justin Bieber were reportedly reluctant to have her parents around their baby boy, Jack.

A source claimed Hailey had a “blowout” with her family and didn’t want them “meddling” around their child.

“Hailey's relationship with her family has been eroding for some time now. She was closer with her mom, but that started to break down when she fell pregnant because she didn't want to tell her family for months,” the source claimed to the Daily Mail last year.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle spilled a lot of royal tea after stepping back from official royal duties in 2020.

After expressing frustration about the media intrusion, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex bid farewell to the UK and are no longer addressed as His or Her Royal Highness (HRH). 

Prince Harry, who remains fifth in line to the throne, also gave up his military titles and is currently living in California with the Suits alum and their two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet.

Tensions in the royal family flared since their announcement, and Prince Harry said he “would love a reconciliation” with his royal family back in the UK in an interview with the BBC this May.

Prince Harry said his monarch father “won't speak to [him] because of this security stuff” and that he didn’t want to fight with him anymore because he doesn’t “know how much longer [his] father has.”

He said there have been “so many disagreements” between him and some of his family members, but he had “forgiven them".

“I can't see a world in which I would bring my wife and children back to the UK at this point,” he said.

“I would love reconciliation with my family. There's no point continuing to fight anymore, life is precious,” he added.

Marquise Jackson defiantly offered $6,700 to his father, 50 Cent, for 24 hours of his time in 2022.

“Since y’all think $6,700 is sooo much money someone tell my pops I will pay him $6,700 for just 24hr of his time so we can do everything I ever wanted to do with him as a kid,” he wrote in an Instagram post, alongside a picture of him sitting next to the world “Entitled,” spelled out in dollar bills.

Days before sharing the Instagram post, Marquise addressed his strained relationship with 50 Cent while speaking to rapper Choke No Joke.

“$6,700 a month in… New York City, you do the math. You’re talking about a Forbes lister – you’re talking about someone that has problems with everybody – you can’t just live in any neighborhood, $81K is not a substantial amount of money. You can’t just live anywhere,” he said.

Marquise has had a fraught relationship with 50 Cent since the rapper’s split from his mother, Shaniqua Tompkins.

“My relationship with my son is changing because he and his mom aren't friends anymore,” 50 Cent said during the custody battle with Shaniqua.

“There's different channels I have to go through. He has lawyers appointed to him through the court. So I have to talk to his lawyer to get things situated for me to actually get him,” he added.

Over the years, the Candy Shop rapper’s relationship with his son worsened to the point where the father said he wouldn’t care if his son got “hit by a bus.”

When Marquise shared a photo with 50 Cent’s rival Kenneth “Supreme” McGriff, the father replied saying, “If both these little n****s got hit by a bus, I wouldn’t have a bad day.”

The In Da Club rapper addressed his relationship with Marquise in an Instagram Live in 2020.

“I didn’t think that success would cost me my first-born, but it’s the situation it is,” he said at the time.

“My grandfather used to say, ‘If it rattles like a snake and slithers like a snake, is it a snake, or do you need to be bit?’ What he keeps saying is, every time you see the boy he show up with somebody you got a problem with. What does that tell you?” the Grammy winner went on to say.

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