Actress Minka Kelly made peace with her stripper mom before she died in 2008, but still wishes she had been a better mother when she was young.

The new Charlie's Angels star admits she had a "pretty complicated" relationship with mother, Maureen Kelly, and they had a strained relationship throughout the actress' teens and 20s.

Kelly tells the new issue of Cosmopolitan magazine, "She was 5'11", legs up to her ears, gorgeous. She got along on that for as long as she could."

But mom wasn't the most responsible parent and would often wake a sleeping Minka up in the middle of the night to go on shopping trips - after she'd performed at the club.

The actress recalls, "She would want me to skip school... I was like, 'No, Mom, I've gotta go to school!'"

But mother and daughter made peace shortly before the star's mom succumbed to colon cancer three years ago.

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

"By the time she passed I was holding her. I was with her until her last breath. We made it."