Less than two weeks after Steven Spielberg’s adopted daughter opened up to a U.K. tabloid about her history of childhood sexual abuse, struggles with mental illness and ambitions to become a porn star, she was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence after throwing things at her fiance during an argument, police told multiple outlets.
Mikaela Spielberg, 23, was arrested early Saturday morning on suspicion of domestic violence and booked into the Hill Detention Center in Nashville, Tennessee, where she lives, the Daily Mail reported. WZTV said the arrest came after the acclaimed director’s daughter and her 47-year-old fiance, Chuck Pankow, a professional darts player, got into an argument after returning home from a bar around 4 a.m.
Spielberg's daughter 'injured her fiancé's wrist during argument' https://t.co/n6DWoxrbXE via @MailOnline >> this poor troubled young lady needs help. prayers for her mental, emotional and spiritual well being.
— Bo Snerdley (@BoSnerdley) March 2, 2020
Pankow supposedly made “a rude comment” to Spielberg, who got angry and threw objects at him, WZTV reported. Police did not say what objects Spielberg allegedly threw, but one object struck Pankow’s hand and cased a visible injury, including bleeding and swelling.
While Spielberg and Pankow admitted that they had been fighting, police determined that Spielberg was the aggressor after she gave conflicting accounts of what happened, WZTV said. After she was booked into jail, someone posted her $1,000 bond, but she was required to stay in custody for 12 hours because of a mandatory hold for domestic violence suspects, the Daily Mail said.
Pankow later told Fox News that the incident was “a misunderstanding.” He wouldn’t offer details about the incident, including who called police, but insisted, “No one is hurt.”
The domestic violence arrest put Mikaela Spielberg back in the news after she recently grabbed headlines for opening up to The Sun about her rather unconventional career choice: To become a porn star and exotic dancer because she found such work to be creative and “empowering.”
Describing herself as “a sexual creature,” Spieberg explained how she wanted to get naked and perform solo sex acts on screen as a way “to honor my body in a way that’s lucrative.”
Mikaela Spielberg said her fiancé didn’t mind as long as she didn’t have sex with other people in movies. She most of all insisted that her famous parents were supportive of her going into the adult film industry.
Indeed, around Hollywood, Steven Spielberg and his actress wife Kate Capeshaw are known as loving, “evolved” parents who try to support all their children’s career and life-style choices, a close friend told Page Six.
The couple also move in a world of creative “artistic” people whose lives are “complicated” and who have “complicated kids,” the friend said.
But Mikaela Spielberg’s adult-film choice has tested the couple’s ability to be patient and open-minded, this friend told Page Six.
“As Mikaela said, Steven and Kate are nothing but supportive of her, as they are with all their children,” the friend said. But their feelings are, yes, “complicated,” the friend said.
“Outwardly, Steven and Kate — who are the most evolved parents in the world and love their kids beyond all measure — have always been supportive of Mikaela and try to understand her,” the friend said. “Obviously, though, they’re embarrassed by her sudden public admission of entry into the sex worker world.”
Someone who has worked with Spielberg, 73, told Page Six that he and Capshaw, 66, only want what’s best for his daughter.
“But they’re also concerned that this path might not end up being the best,” the colleague said.
In her interview with The Sun, Mikaela Spielberg described some harrowing personal details that could lead people to question whether her choice to become a porn star or to be dating a man old enough to be her father comes from a healthy place.
Mikaela Spielberg may have grown up in a household of enormous privilege — Forbes estimates that Spielberg’s net worth is around $3.7 billion — but she also revealed that she had been sexually abused as a child.
Mikaela Spielberg made it clear that her abuser was not a member of her family or someone in her parents’ circle of friends. The abuse, she said, led her to struggle with anorexia, borderline personality disorder and alcoholism as she was growing up and into adulthood.
At one point, she said she was sent to a boarding school for troubled teens, where she was bullied for her weight. “I came out of there … with more anxiety and more attachment issues, more depression and more hatred from my body,” she told The Sun.
For the director’s friends, there also are questions about whether Mikaela Spielberg grew up feeling under pressure from being the director’s daughter. Spielberg is one of the most acclaimed and influential film directors of the past 50 years, creating such classics as “Jaws,” “E.T.,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Jurassic Park,” and “Schindler’s List.”
Spielberg and Capshaw met on the set of his 1984 film “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” which co-starred the actress. They have seven kids between them, and all grew up joining their father on film sets and going with him to premieres and to the Oscars, Page Six reported.
“Some kids, no matter what advantages — or even because of them — are just lost. Maybe Mikaela felt unworthy of her folks, of her name, that she could never live up to it,” the family friend said. “It’s hard to be the product of parents who are so successful.”
