"Gossip Girl" Leighton Meester Talks About Being Born In Prison To A Drug Smuggler

Leighton Meester's upbringing was nothing like that of her Gossip Girl character Blair Waldorf: the actress was born to a mother who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for smuggling marijuana.

As Us Weekly reports in its latest issue, on newsstands now, her mom Connie was pregnant with Leighton when she entered federal prison in Texas. At 29, she gave birth while she was just beginning her sentence following a conviction for her involvement with a drug ring that smuggled 1,200-pound shipments of marijuana into the United States from Jamaica. Her father, Doug, also served time for being part of the smuggling operation. Today, Doug works in construction and Connie is a screenwriter.

"Anything that her mother and I did that was questionable occurred before she was born," Doug, who split from Connie in 1992, tells Us.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[CKieffer]

I think this actress may just have some staying power.

[SHOPARAZZI]

im glad she's risen above it all. gossip girls rocks!

[BlackJAC]

How exactly does it "rock?" My siblings and I all went to private high schools, and we were all too busy doing homework and living under the autocracy of the headmaster to even consider engaging in so much as a tenth of those antics.

[NTO08]

I don't care what this girl was born to...she matters not at all.