Minka Kelly: I Had 'Pretty Complicated' Relationship With Stripper Mom

Mom doesn't always know best.

In Minka Kelly's case, she often had to be the responsible one growing up. In the October issue of Cosmopolitan magazine (as excerpted by the Daily Mail) Derek Jeter's 31-year-old ex-girlfriend opens up about the "pretty complicated" relationship she had with her stripper mother, Maureen Kelly, prior to her death in 2008.

"She was 5'11"," the Charlie's Angels star explains. "Legs up to her ears, gorgeous. She got along on that for as long as she could."

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Kelly says her mother would sometimes wake her up in the middle of the night when she got home from working at the strip club. The mother-daughter duo would then go to the supermarket shopping. "That was like our big Friday," she recalls. "She would want me to skip school. ...I was like 'No, Mom, I've gotta go to school!'"

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Kelly's mother chose to raise her daughter as a single parent. The actress' father, onetime Aerosmith guitarist Rick Dufay, "wanted to try the family thing," but Kelly says her mom "was too busy having fun."

"It wasn't like he didn't want to be part of our lives," the Friday Night Lights star adds.

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"I didn't know how to appreciate what good friends we were," Kelly admits. "Because I just wanted her to be my mom." 

Sadly, three years ago, Kelly's mother died of colon cancer. "That's detectable," Kelly says. "Talk about being reckless and not paying attention to your body."

Fortunately, the two made peace with one another before it was too late. "By the time she passed I was holding her," Kelly says. "I was with her until her last breath. We made it."

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