Susan Sarandon has a tendency to play strong female characters that never make any apologies. From Thelma and Louise and Lorenzo's Oil to Stepmom, she is always a force, which feels true to who she is in real life as well. After an Academy Award win and numerous nominations, her career has never slowed down. But despite her rise to fame in Hollywood, she has always maintained an incredibly close relationship with her daughter Eva Amurri Martino.
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Eva is the Oscar winner's only child from her first marriage to Italian filmmaker Franco Amurri. She was born after her mom had already made a name for herself starring in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Since the actress continued booking films right and left, young Eva spent much of her childhood backstage on her mother's movie sets.
"It kind of is almost like being part of the circus," Martino told Today about that time in her life. "There's something really fun and adventurous."
A Small Break From Acting
Eva has appeared in numerous films with her mother over the years including Dead Man Walking, The Banger Sisters, Middle of Nowhere, That's My Boy, and Mothers and Daughters. She also appeared on numerous TV shows like Californication and Undateable but after having her daughter Marlowe with ex-husband Kyle Martino, she had then decided that she wanted to take a step back from acting and be a more active parent. (Spoiler alert... fear not she's back and better than ever!) As a result, she started her own blog, Happily Eva After, so she could keep working while being present at home. She's been a blogger ever since and regularly shares pics of her life and family on social media. And that includes her celeb mom, of course.
"I just wanted to be putting my energy into something that I felt was just constructing something more positive in my life and for my daughter, especially," she explained.
Susan Sarandon and daughter Eva Amurri during 1996 MTV Video Music Awards in New York City, New York, United States. (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc)
Her mom, impressed with her daughter's decision, is very close with her grandchildren. But they don't call her Grandma...she's known as 'Honey.'
"I think that what she's doing is amazing. I'm very proud of her. ... And she's really a funny kid. She's fierce, she's strong."
Sarandon is incredibly close with her daughter to the point that she was not only involved in her grandaughter's birth, but she was also literally the first to hold her.
"I caught her, which is so much easier than pushing one out," she told E News. "I was there for the birth. [Eva] had a 36-hour home birth. Yeah, I know, it was like a National Geographic special of some sort and the baby...I was there and then we put it on her stomach and she crawled to the breast. Did you that know a baby could do that? I didn't."
Eva welcomed two more children with Martino, a former soccer player, before they called it quits in 2020 after nine years of marriage -- Major James and Mateo Antoni. But just because she chose a different career path doesn't mean that she didn't learn a lot growing up as Susan Sarandon's daughter. In fact, she's been incredibly inspired by her mother's success over the years.
"I think the biggest lesson there was just the permission to want a lot for yourself, career-wise, as a woman. I think that was extremely valuable to me," she told Yahoo Finance. "I think (my mother) really unapologetically ... went after what she needed to be fulfilled. So it was nice to just have that example."
'Monarch': A Family Project!
Eva has built a lovely little family life with her kids in the suburbs of Connecticut which is an easy commute for Martino to visit from New York City. She has two stepbrothers from her mother's relationship with actor Tim Robbins as well, Miles Robbins and Jack Robbins, and they all seem close as well.
Amurri is stepping back into the starlight, joining her mom in Fox's upcoming music series, Monarch, which is produced by Fox Entertainment. Amurri will play a younger Dottie Cantrell Roma, which is the character Sarandon plays in the present timeline of the series. She was seen in the series premiere episode.
Monarch was created by Melissa London Hilfers and is described as a multigenerational Texas-sized musical drama about America's first family of country music, the Romans. The Romans are full of talent focusing on Dottie Cantrell Roman and her husband Albie, portrayed by Trace Adkins.
Editors Note: This article was originally published on April 9, 2021. It was updated on Sept. 14, 2022.
