'American Beauty' star Mena Suvari talks about her memoir, 'The Great Peace'

There are so many things Mena Suvari never wanted you to know. And there were ghosts of her past all over Los Angeles, willing to keep her secrets. Like the woman she ran into once at Whole Foods — a woman with whom she'd had a threesome.

That sort of behavior didn’t jibe with the actress’ public image. In the two 1999 movies that made her famous — the teen comedy "American Pie" and the suburban drama "American Beauty" — the central narrative revolved around her characters’ virginity.

But it's been two decades, and Suvari, now 42, says she is tired of pretending. So she's written a memoir, "The Great Peace" (Hachette, $28), that will not only shatter her saccharine reputation but also, she hopes, free her from shame.

The book is a relic of Hollywood's pre-#MeToo era, documenting the ways in which Suvari says she "looked like a Faberge egg on the outside but was hollow inside." Beginning to model at age 13, she grew to believe her looks were primarily what she had to offer. She now thinks she confused that kind of attention for love.

"I took the easy path and bought into the image the magazines, TV shows, and paparazzi had created for me," she writes in the book. "I was exceptional, a star, special — too special, in fact, to have problems."

She tells a story that is harrowing from the outset: At age 12, she writes, she was raped by her brother's friend. After she moved to Los Angeles as a teenager, a photographer took — and kept, she alleges — naked underage snapshots of her. She writes that when she was 16, one of her representatives — 20 years her senior — would have sex with her and then remind her to learn her lines or brush her hair before an audition. She contracted herpes, she says.

She got married and divorced twice — first, when she was 21, to Robert Brinkmann, a 37-year old cinematographer she met during a movie shoot. Ten years later, she married Simone Sestito, an Italian concert promoter who, she claims, bled her financially and got physical with her during heated arguments. (In a statement, Sestito denied Suvari’s allegations.)

Suvari says she numbed her problems with marijuana and, at one point, meth. She grew critical of her body, getting breast implants only to have them surgically removed years later because they embarrassed her.

It was in 2018, when she was redecorating her home with her new husband, Michael Hope, that Suvari made a discovery that would lead to "The Great Peace." While sifting through an old storage unit, she stumbled across some artifacts from her adolescence, including a 50-page poetry binder, old photographs and a diary containing a suicide note she didn't remember writing.

She knew she needed to do something with the material but wasn't sure what until a friend convinced her to go the memoir route.

In the book, Suvari writes about what she describes as an "odd" encounter with Kevin Spacey on the set of "American Beauty." Before the two actors were set to film an intimate scene, "Kevin took me into a small room with a bed and we laid next to each other, me facing toward him while he held me lightly," she writes.

"Lying there with Kevin was strange and eerie but also calm and peaceful, and as for his gentle caresses, I was so used to being open and eager for affection that it felt good to just be touched. Good and warm. I wasn't sure if Kevin was interested in me or not. My head immediately went to that place, and I didn't know how far he was going to take it or how I was going to react if he did go there. But he didn't."

Asked if she now views the encounter differently in light of the numerous men who have since come forward claiming Spacey sexually assaulted them, Suvari grows defensive.

"No. What do you mean?" she asks. "I talked about my time on the set of 'American Beauty,' so that was just part of my experience."

Suvari continues to act and will is next appear in a biopic where she’ll play Ronald Reagan’s first wife, Jane Wyman. Opening up about her past has allowed her to feel "more present" in her acting.

"I have spent so much of my life feeling in the boat alone," she says. "There were many moments where I felt like I had nowhere to go, like no one would understand. I was too embarrassed, so I stayed in bad situations. I'm sharing my story to help people like that know they don't have to stay. If I can shave off a summer of suffering for someone, I want to."