Till death do we know who’s-who in a celebrity’s love life! From Farrah Fawcett’s college sweetie
to John Lennon’s pre-Yoko Ono relationship – these celebs’ affairs didn’t stay hidden in the casket!
With Farrah Fawcett's iconic golden blowout, million-watt smile, and effortless retro glam,
she presided over the 1970s as America's beloved small-screen sweetheart. Her own heart,
though, was commanded by a number of suitors — many known, some unknown.
“Like they say, it’s nice to have a man around the house.”
Actor Ryan O'Neal stood out in public as her most well-recognized partner despite having an
on-again, off-again connection from the time her career peaked until the last decade of
her life. After Fawcett's death in 2009, an unfamiliar name came to the forefront
surrounded by claims that he was romantically involved with Fawcett during her final years.
Greg Lott identified himself as Fawcett's college boyfriend,
telling ABC News that they were together at the University of Texas and had reconnected
in 1998. By then, Fawcett had made her way out of several consecutive relationships,
including that with O'Neal. Lott revealed more about their connection, sharing:
"Farrah Fawcett and I reunited ... in a relationship, a loving,
consensual, one-on-one relationship."
He claimed that they remained exclusive and together until the "Charlie's Angels" star
died. Lott and O'Neal apparently didn't get along during Fawcett's lifetime, and even after. One
of two legendary paintings Andy Warhol had done of Fawcett was carried off by O'Neal,
despite the actor's living trust stating that all her artwork be forwarded to her alma mater.
Lott notified the university and was aggressively fighting for the
painting's return according to CNN. A verdict in 2013 permitted O'Neal to keep the painting.
The coming together of two stars as famous as Whitney Houston and Michael
Jackson would have been quite something. While the artists never teamed up for
a duet that would have doubtless reached chart-topping successes,
Houston and Jackson did quietly indulge in a romance behind the scenes during the 1990s.
For two of America's biggest acts to cross paths at the time was only
inevitable. What wasn't common knowledge was that they shared something more than
friendship. The supposed affair came to light after Houston's death in 2012,
and after Jackson's death in 2009, when the latter's bodyguard approached the press
with some unheard-of celebrity gossip. As Matt Fiddes explained to The Sun:
"Whitney practically moved into Michael's ranch and they had a fling like any other young couple."
“We just sat together in chemistry and it started working, you know”
Apparently, Fiddes further claimed that the "Thriller" hitmaker was
even keen on marrying Houston as much as she felt the same. Close to both singers,
producer David Gest revealed that Houston and Jackson reciprocated a desire to be
married but Jackson was too shy to pop the question, per The Indian Express.
The moment she was unveiled in her Princess Leia fineries,
Carrie Fisher became a fantasy of millions. Among them were many contemporaries in her
own artistic league who fancied her as well. One such heavy-hitter was rock legend Freddie Mercury.
“This is a silly thing to talk about.”
“Is it really? That’s funny because you wrote a whole book about it!”
If you're racking your brains to fish out a picture of Fisher and
Mercury in a romantic embrace, don't strain your memory. Their affair was a
surprise revelation made after Fisher's death in 2016 by way of a biography,
"Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds: Princess Leia and Unsinkable Tammy In Hell."
Fisher was introduced to him through her mother Debbie Reynolds,
who took her teen daughter to a star-studded party hosted by Mick Jagger in the 1970s,
the book claimed. It was there that Mercury struck up a friendship with Fisher. Though the
"Star Wars" actor was initially hesitant about engaging with the Queen vocalist,
who was in a long-term relationship with Mary Austin, she was soon enamored of the stage icon.
The book gets into scandalous detail, even going on to claim that Fisher explored an
affair with another famous queer icon she met at Jagger's party: David Bowie. Though Fisher never
addressed these supposed liaisons during her lifetime, she did leave fans with a long-hidden
and long-hoped-for secret. She and Harrison Ford were an item, telling People magazine:
"It was Han and Leia during the week, and Carrie and Harrison during the weekend.”
Amy Winehouse's magnificent presence in the world of music was highlighted as extensively
as the goings-on in her private sphere. A popular soul and jazz figure until her death in 2011, with
a legacy that endures even after, Winehouse was involved in a number of tumultuous relationships
during her lifetime that were well-publicized — except one that apparently no one knew about.
“And I was like, ‘No no! I’ve got a boyfriend!”
Libertines frontman and known friend of Winehouse, Pete Doherty, came forward a year after her death
with a dramatic revelation about their supposed romantic relationship, telling The Daily Mail:
"Amy and I were lovers. I loved her then and, well, I still do today.”
Around the period that Doherty was hanging out with her, Winehouse was involved with Blake
Fielder-Civil in a famously tempestuous marriage with drug issues and jail time.
Particularly memorable footage from the noughties hazily harks back to the time Winehouse, Doherty,
and a few mice made a video titled "Winemouse" together,
discouraging a then-imprisoned Fielder-Civil from divorcing Winehouse, Doherty warned:
"If you divorce her you'll have me to deal with.”
Rolling Stone magazine, acknowledging the infamous clip, asked Winehouse
about Doherty in 2008. She just called them “good friends” and left it at that. Doherty
claimed that though Winehouse became unkind to him toward the end of their relationship,
the two remained in touch until the final year of her life.
Of all the salons in all the towns in all the world, he walked into hers. Well,
kinda. Verita Thompson worked as a hairdresser in and around Hollywood during the early 1940s when
her paths first crossed with one of cinema's most formidable legends, Humphrey Bogart.
“I’m not one of your modern husbands. Chin up, stiff up,
tight lipped, and all that sort of stuff.”
"Casablanca" was yet to release when Bogart, who had already secured his
place as an American noir icon, locked eyes with Thompson at a party. He was then on his
third notoriously volatile marriage to actor Mayo Methot. Thompson was a married woman too,
but sparks flew. Thompson shared with the press four decades after Bogart’s death in 1957, that:
"Bogie didn't like to dance, but,
honey, we danced the night away and from that day on we were lovers.”
Thompson revealed the affair in a tell-all book, "Bogie and Me: A Love Story," in 1982,
saying that Bogart always thought they’d make a perfect couple because they were
so alike. Bogart and Thompson's association stretched until 1955,
going steady even in the backdrop of Bogart's celebrated high-profile marriage to Lauren Bacall.
Given the tightly wound industry norms at the time, Bogart and Thompson's secret
love didn't make front-page headlines — but wasn't the best news for the iconic
Bogart-Bacall union. Thompson was, in her own words, "Bacall's worst nightmare."
She died in 2008, having become an inseparable part of Bogart's legacy.
In examining his immeasurable contribution to music and culture, history often glosses over
the fact that John Lennon was a rather notorious adulterer. One of the women he
is alleged to have been secretly involved with was the iconic pop singer Alma Cogan.
In a startling revelation made nearly half a century after Cogan's death in 1966, her sister
Sandra Caron confirmed her clandestine affair with one of the most revered songwriters in history.
The Cogan-Lennon pairing was only spoken about in whispers at the time, "but it was something
no one admitted because John was married" to Cynthia Lennon then, Caron told Evening Standard.
Cogan reportedly hung out with all of the Fab Four
but her sexual chemistry with the smart Beatle was intense,
so much so that even Cynthia couldn't help but notice "how outrageously she flirted with him."
“When I really got down to it. And I got down to it.”
Years after Lennon's death, she admitted she was aware of the spark between her
ex-husband and Cogan, as The Daily Mail quoted her saying:
"Now that I think about it, with all the emotion gone out of it, I can see the attraction."
As goes Cynthia's narrative, Lennon was heartbroken after Cogan's death
from cancer and found respite in Yoko Ono. In fact, she thought that Lennon's
pairing with Cogan was the real deal. It was Lennon's extramarital involvement
with the latter that apparently sealed the divorce deal for Cynthia in 1968.
What defense do mortals like ourselves have against the charms of Cary Grant,
when even a beauty queen like Sophia Loren couldn't resist? In a secret
divulged almost three decades after Grant's death, Loren harked back to the 1950s when
she had a whirlwind romance with her famous co-star from "The Pride and the Passion."
“I was not in love with Car– how can you not be in love with Cary Grant?”
The film was a Hollywood milestone for Loren, who had so far only enamored
audiences on her Italian home base and was debuting opposite one of America's biggest
stars. As Loren recalls her first encounter with Grant to The Daily Mail, she said:
"He looked as though he'd just stepped down from the screen: a dream come true.”
Grant, 30 years her senior, soon asked her out to dinner. At the time, Loren was on the
cusp of marrying her partner, the Italian film producer Carlo Ponti. Grant himself was on his
third marriage to Betsy Drake, but his on-set romance with Loren was so fiery that he was
dreaming of a life together. Grant wrote to Loren in a letter made public in her memoir, writing:
"If you think and pray with me, for the same thing and purpose,
all will be right and life will be good.”
Curtains dropped on their passion-charged fantasies when Ponti's lawyers arranged his
marriage to Loren by proxy in 1957. Loren later told The Sydney Morning
Herald that not long before he died, Grant called her one last time to say goodbye.
Patrick Swayze was married to the love of his life,
Lisa Niemi, for 34 years. Childhood sweethearts, the two met during their
teens and were together until the "Dirty Dancing" star's tragic death in 2009.
Though Niemi is part of Swayze's enduring legacy as his longest partner,
a second woman came forward claiming her significance in his life. Actor Kirstie
Alley believed she had shared a profound emotional connection with the late dancer
around the time the two co-starred in the 1985 television miniseries "North and South."
During a 2012 appearance on Entertainment Tonight she revealed that she and Swayze fell
in love despite both of them being married to o ther people at the time. She admitted:
"I think what we did was worse because I think when you fall in love with someone
when you're married, you jeopardize your own marriage and their marriage."
“We aren’t the kind of romantic people that sit
around and say, ‘Oh darling I just know this is forever.’”
According to a source quoted by Radar Online,
Alley had strong feelings for Swayze. She apparently thought he was “the most handsome,
sexy, kin[d] person” she met. Every time she went on set, she fell more in love.
Long after Swayze's death, she consistently watched the miniseries
they had shot together. Best known for her television work in sitcoms "Cheers"
and "Veronica's Closet," Alley died in 2022 — also from cancer, like Swayze.
January 22, 2008, was a tragic day in Hollywood. Actor extraordinaire Heath Ledger was found dead
of an accidental drug overdose in New York City. It was a sudden, seismic shock that
rattled fans across the world, and also brought forth some unheard-of details about Ledger's life.
His long-term relationship with actor Michelle Williams, with whom he also shared a daughter,
had come to an end only a few months before he died. After their breakup,
the status of Ledger's romantic life was in the shadows ... until it wasn't.
“You’re with your girlfriend or your friends or your family,
and they’re spying in on you, it actually feels like you’re gonna get slapped across the face.”
In a bombshell report after Ledger's death, Radar Online claimed that the
"Brokeback Mountain" star was involved with Lindsay Lohan during his final days. Sourcing
back to an alleged phone call between Lohan's parents, the outlet quoted her
mother saying that Ledger and Lohan were very close, and that his death shook her to her
core. Lohan's mother apparently also expressed fear for the "Mean Girls" star's life, saying:
"... When [Lindsey Lohan]'s drunk or takes an Adderall with it she
will do something like Heath Ledger did in a second without thinking."
Meanwhile, conflicting reports suggest that Ledger's endmost romance was with
his good friend Mary-Kate Olsen, with a source telling People magazine:
"They were hooking up, but neither were particularly interested in making it exclusive."
It is well-publicized that the masseuse who found Ledger dead
in his apartment immediately dialed Olsen.
It's impossible to flash back to "Diamonds Are Forever" without conjuring up the image of a
stunning enchantress introducing herself as Plenty O'Toole to James Bond at a casino. Lana Wood,
the beauty in question, was more than just an on-screen Bond girl flanking Sean Connery.
“You don’t bring in stunt people for the love scenes is what I’m trying to talk about.”
“No no no no.”
In a revelation made a year after Connery's death in 2020, Wood revealed that the pair
had taken their sizzling chemistry off-camera for a brief fling around the time they filmed their
1971 spy thriller. It was likely a passionate affair, since Wood recalled for Fox News that
"kissing wasn't way up there on the list" of events that took place during their liaison.
Even so, Express quoted her saying that with the knowledge of her covert romance with Connery,
acting out intimate scenes with him was especially tough, admitting:
"I think anyone would be hard-pushed to resist Sean."
Despite it all, the award-winning Connery didn't let matters of the heart overshadow his work,
with Wood recalling his efficiency on set. Unfortunately, it wasn't a relationship built to
last. Wood alleged that while Connery initiated the affair, it was she who called it off.
She was dating music composer Leslie Bricusse at the time and,
prizing her connection with him, thought it best to end things with Connery.