Said Lisa Dillon, quoted in "Patrick Stewart rewrote our five-year love story as a silly fling/The Star Trek actor’s autobiography glosses over his relationship with Lisa Dillon. The actress says she feels betrayed and diminished" (London Times).
Dillon was 23 when she was cast alongside Stewart in a production of Ibsen’s "Master Builder." Stewart was 62 and quite famous.
What Stewart wrote in his memoir: "And so, another divorce. I felt stupid and responsible … I had cheated on my wife with a younger woman — again … And just like my affair with Jenny Hetrick, my time with Lisa Dillon would also prove to be relatively short … In a life chockablock with joy and success, my two failed marriages are my greatest regret."
How that "chockablock with joy" must irk. Stewart stayed with Dillon for 5 years, but in the memoir, she's the woman who broke up a marriage. And worse, even the transitory love was fake. Stewart writes in his book: "Life imitated art. I remember the warning I had received from an older actor decades ago, that if you keep saying ‘I love you’ to someone in a play, you can drift into believing the sentiment to be true."
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65 comments:
Always remember that actors generally have the morals of cockroaches combined with the ego of Zeus.
Well, I'm not a London Times subscriber, but this sounds like a tale as old as marriages.
Sorry Lisa, if you want to be non-diminished, maybe don't sleep with married men. Can I call you a wambulance?
Patrick Stewart oozes vacuity. He’s deeply superficial. He’s a projection on a screen with no soul. Like all actors. When you pretend for a living you become not the thing you’re pretending to be but mere pretense itself.
Wow, that was deep.
And all these years later denying one of the perks of acting for males - immediate emotional access to actresses that moves across the acting arc to decided physicalities.
Dude. You sucked up to a famous, married actor and fell for his bullshit. I'm sorry that your young and tender heart was crushed. Truly. He's represented your relationship exactly as he sees it, though.
Actors--male, female and I guess these days non binary and transgender have affairs. Who knew? And some of the affairs aren't smart. Well I think the percentage of "aren't smart" affairs is pretty high. Who knew that?
Well...what does she expect?
Why can't they both be right? To her it was life-changing. To him, something small he now regrets. Seems like that happens to people's perceptions of events frequently.
In a life chockablock with joy and success, he couldnt manage to let his plaything walk away with a little dignity and respect. Consistent with the two broken marriages. Great actor, but typical in other ways.
She clearly had hoped to be more than just a silly affair that broke up a marriage. So much more!
hmm let's do the math..
62 divided by 2 is 31...
31 plus 7 is 38.........
now for the Hard part...
is 23 LESS THAN 38 ?????
why, Yes.. Yes it IS!!!
aside from being "creepy (ya/2+7 < ha).. She was LITERALLY young enough to be His Granddaughter
"The actress says she feels betrayed and diminished."
Anyone who knowingly has an affair with a married man should not expect anything more.
This is why Jane Austen in Mansfield Park seems to oppose amateur theatricals that involve protestations of love, moving from the printed page to actual young people (beat it Patrick--you're too old, trading on your status) looking each other in the eye ...
Austen has been much criticized for this. What harm could there be? Young people find something out about themselves! If their hearts are broken, this is a learning experience! If we don't inflict trauma on ourselves, and then embrace it, we're just accepting the trauma inflicted on us by the fucking old white patriarchy!
In the novel, there is a small rural society in which one family is clearly dominant: a title (a baronet I believe), big house on the hill, servants. Two sisters grow up in this family with a "troubled" childhood in the sense that they are spoiled. They compete for the attentions of the very few eligible young men who show up. A dashing brother and sister come for a visit: they have also been spoiled, but since they have expensive tastes, they are convinced they need to marry for money. They propose the amateur theatrical, for selfish reasons. The young man wins the heart of both sisters, with one convinced that she is the winner. It turns out the young man was playing with her--not enough money?--and he goes back to London.
Eventually both of the young people who had their moment together marry unhappily. The woman tracks down the man, seduces him, demands that he admits he always loved her. They abandon their spouses and get some kind of marriage, giving up many of their respectable social contacts. For Austen, what they achieve cannot be described as happiness.
Truth hurts. What is 5 year compared with actual commitment. Take note young ladies.
What is Dillon going for? A five year relationship feels much different to a 62 year-old celebrity than it does to a 23 year-old actress. In his 80's now, Stewart considered it a fling. Dillon is in her 40's, and that should make some sense to her.
It sounds like Dillon is just trying to reframe the relationship and maybe get some notoriety out of the memoir.
I'd put a "Gender differences" tag on this. Everyone seems to accept the idea that a 62 y/o man assuming he's somewhat good looking, famous, and rich can have an affair or get married to a 23 y/o cutie.
But how many 62 y/o women, no matter how well=preserved, rich, or famous have affairs with handsome 23 y/o man. Or get married to them?
BTW, some women feel its perfectly natural for them to compete with other women for the Alpha males, and the fact that he's married seems to have no impact on their behavior. Sorry, your adulterous affair ended up as a dissmissive paragraph in his autobiography. Very sad. Very.
Stewart's not gay? I don't think I made that up.
I was more interested that Stewart had an affair with Vash.
Has Lisa thought about how the affair made Stewart's wife feel? That was probably her most enduring marriage the time. I imagine when Stewart was deciding what he wanted to say about the whole thing, he was thinking more about what the ex-wife take away from it than what the young lover would and rightfully so.
She feels...diminished?
Maybe this is her actual size.
Patrick Stewart supports progressive views, so this won’t #MeToo him.
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Aspect of Love” starts with a love affair between an actress and fan during a production of Ibsen’s “The Master Builder”. The actress dumps the younger fan for his much older and richer uncle.
This is so routine that there's nothing to be said about their behavior.
In today's world, consider potential transgender 'affairs' and whether they exist in significant numbers or with the same dynamics outside of prostitution (e.g., Thai Lady Boys).
What would Dylan Mulvaney do? "I fell for Patrick Stewart, he strung me along for 5 years, and he was so rough with me."
Mental image of the day!
Dillon? You were had by a discount Pete Postlethwaite.
Said Patrick Stewart:
"Life imitated art. I remember the warning I had received from an older actor decades ago, that if you keep saying ‘I love you’ to someone in a play, you can drift into believing the sentiment to be true."
More like, 'you can convince your paramour the sentiment is true.'
I am 58 in July- 5 years at my age, younger than the 62 year old Stewart at the beginning of the affair, seems extremely short period of time. When I was 23, 5 years was still a big chunk of time from that point of view.
The sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
"Engage."
Ruh roh, here comes the lawsuit.
Almost all novels about women deal with false perceptions of a man and the ensuing heartbreak and the ensue of that. Young women simply fall for showiness, it's our nature. An Army uniform, an aristocratic title, enormous wealth, a sheik, a guru, a football player, a bank robber, a terrorist, even a learned professor. An older man. A young phony. Afterward, maybe we have a little insight into human nature but some of us simply refuse to learn anything. There's novels on that, too. And newspaper/media stories. Probably Tik-Tok. Yet all of this is more interesting than feminist stories, which as genre, refuse to acknowledge false perceptions and heartbreak unless a man is involved, the pig.
I suppose in a way women transitioning to be men is the same story except only one person is involved and we aren't allowed to know the real outcome. The story will end in the next issue/show but we can't find the next issue; the shows been discontinued. Years later we find the miserable outcome in a magazine or DVD stored in an attic trunk, or in a revival based on a cache of cancelled shows. "Take her up tenderly/ Fashioned so slenderly/ Young and so fair."
“Mental image of the day!”
And thanks for that! On this Tuesday, you are an Enigma wrapped in spittle, good sir.
I'm just kind of surprised that one of England's favorite thespians isn't gay.
"Dude. You sucked up to a famous, married actor and fell for his bullshit. I'm sorry that your young and tender heart was crushed. Truly. He's represented your relationship exactly as he sees it, though."
Exactly...
"my two failed marriages are my greatest regret."...
Stewart stayed with Dillon for 5 years, but in the memoir, she's the woman who broke up a marriage. And worse, even the transitory love was fake.
How is that a mischaracterization? Sorry, honey, but a man's wife DOES come first, even if he only realizes that during/after the affair. Something you too should have recognized from the start. He married her, not you.
Stewart's not gay?
Stewart did a lot of clowning around in public with his X-Men co-star, Ian McKellen, who is gay, and it made them look like an old married couple.
Women in adulterous relationships, or in relationships without formal religious or legal commitment, should remember at all times the words spoken in Animal house to Flounder Dorfman by Otter Stratton: "Flounder, you can't spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You fucked up... you trusted us! Hey, make the best of it!"
There is a reason lack of commitment, or violation of a prior commitment, by the guy should be a red flag to every guy's inamorata: You are next.
"Always remember that actors generally have the morals of cockroaches combined with the ego of Zeus."
As distinct from...whom?
Do you have any reason to believe actors naturally have morals significantly different from or more depraved than anyone else? Are they humans somehow innately different from others? To the extent actors may have "loose" (or no) morals, (and inflated self-regard), how do you know they aren't just acting out as would any average person placed in the same circumstances, (i.e., living in a world of wealth and money, where "limits" are less restrictive or even non-existent)? Many who present as "moral" may just be in no position to act out their true desires.
As I was reminded by the movie POOR THINGS, we're all just animals, acting out according to our needs and impulses. We attach meaning and morality to our behaviors after the fact, to rationalize and be able to teach "proper" social comportment to our young. Morals derive from evolved behaviors that tend to contribute to our survival. Pack animals cannot survive long in nature without a pack; we, as do other pack animals, must work together to survive (and more, to enhance our survival so it is more than that, so it can be ordered and reliable and comfortable). These evolved traits include empathy, trust, and a sense of obligation to our peers and relations, including an awareness when we have disappointed or hurt others in our pack, with a concomitant drive to make amends, to feel and express remorse. We see this in non-human pack animals. Being intelligent and able to think symbolically, we attach our own invented "explanations" and "laws" and "moral rules" to the innate drives evolved in us. If we come to believe we can survive or thrive without cooperative relations with others--due to our wealth or power or our station in life and privileges not available to most--how many among us might happily pursue our own self-gratification, violating our shared moral code without heeding the consequences to and reactions of others?
Stewart isn't doctrinaire politically. He supported the cake baker in the UK equivalent of that case, for instance. Wikipedia says he's a fan of Beavis and Butthead, so he can't be all bad.
He cast his actual son as his son in an alternate-history episode of The Next Generation, so he's close with his family.
He split with first wife after 25 years, when he was becoming a worldwide celebrity for Star Trek. Sad, but it happens to a lot of people once the kids are grown and life changes hit. And he was with Dillon for five years; that was longer than his second marriage. I can understand why she feels insulted, but complaining like this will never make her look good.
Anyone who knowingly has an affair with a married man should not expect anything more.
@James K., + 1
@Althouse, why is it so impossible for you and other feminists to teach young women not to mess with married men? Do you even try? Or is it just too much fun for you to blame men for the foolish idiocy of young gold diggers? Even if thee jerk does leave his wife for the young woman (most won’t, though the wife might leave him) eventually there will be another, younger, woman eager to replace this young (but now older) woman.
What cassandra lite said: I thought Stewart had come out of the closet a few years ago.
Maybe he's bi. NTTAWWT.
Anyway, it sounds like consenting adults territory to me. Live and learn (maybe).
To be fair, five years is "fleeting" to a 62 yr old, while near 20% of the life of a 23 yr old.
For some reason this post reminded me of a joke.
What's the worst thing a woman can hear after she gives Willy Nelson a blow job?
But...I'm not Willy Nelson.
It is unrealistic to expect many actors to have the substance of the characters they play whether the expectation is ours or theirs.
Maybe Stewart is acting now. He’s written a book whose most likely readers are older women. So he writes that he regrets his affair with the hot 23 year old and wishes his marriages would have worked out.
Stewart and his wife's understudy are both morons. Did she keep the dress? Perhaps she can sue him for defamation, or inferred assault/rape in the Rotting Apple.
"Bob Boyd said...
She feels...diminished?
Maybe this is her actual size."
She's a big star the size of a diminished star.
It's always, I dunno, entertaining in a way, when homewreckers find out that they, too, are subject to being discarded. The amazing thing is that they seem to be shocked - shocked ! - to discover that the romantic target of their homewrecking is also a homewrecker. Like, it didn't occur to them, at the time. I've known a few homewreckers, and some of them, boy! They're of a different stripe entirely. Once captured, their prize is kept under careful, beady-eyed scrutiny.
She never heard from him that one iconic line of his: "Engage!"
five years is "fleeting" to a 62 yr old, while near 20% of the life of a 23 yr old.
Or the reverse. Consider that the former is rapidly approaching his or her viability threshold. The gates of Planned Parent/hood are equitable and inclusive with a geriatric prejudice.
In the part quoted Patrick Stewart doesn’t say he regrets the affair, just that he regretted the failed marriages. But could it be that offering each other a lot of emotional support did not fit well with his life chockablock with joy and success? There are times when some men get their heads so far up their own asses that they just can’t see straight.
She never heard from him that one iconic line of his: "Engage!"
Au contraire. He was prone to sputter "engage", frequently, liberally, but then he would stop short... and remind her to go Green and recycle her dress on the way out.
What Stewart wrote in his memoir: "And so, another divorce. I felt stupid and responsible"
I haven't read his book, but it sounds here like he is taking responsibility for the affair.
Favorite Patrick Stewart pickup line:
"If I were to ever shoot you, my phaser would be set on stunning."
For some reason, I thought Patrick Stewart was gay. Maybe that's the way he played himself on Ricky Gervais' "Extras".
This relationship lasted longer than the marriage (second of three) it ended. Why shouldn't she expect it would mean as much to Stewart as one of his marriages?
The 'Star Trek actor'?
Surely a highly regarded Shakespearean actor can get more than that, can't he?
Dammit, Jim. It wasn't even the original Star Trek.
I'm with AnotherJim on this. Stewart has absolutely no class. And while Dillon was foolish if she expected more from Stewart than she received, the commenters who find take time to criticize her and not Stewart dismay me.
Of course it was different for the two of them. For Stewart, it was 5 years of 67. For her, it was 5 years of 28. Or looked at realistically, it was 5 years of 10 of her adulthood, while for him it was 5 of 47. And they both should have known better. Too much difference in life experience and in power dynamic.
Do you have any reason to believe actors naturally have morals significantly different from or more depraved than anyone else?
Count on Cookie to show up with a college-sophomore disquisition on moral relativism.
how do you know they aren't just acting out as would any average person placed in the same circumstances, (i.e., living in a world of wealth and money, where "limits" are less restrictive or even non-existent)?
Hollywood is a place where a man (Polanski) can admit in court to giving powerful drugs to a 13-year-old girl so he could sodomize her without a struggle, then flee overseas to escape punishment, but still retain such cachet and influence that the world's leading actors and actresses clamor to work with him for decades after, culminating with an Academy Award and a standing ovation led by Meryl Streep. Then there's Weinstein, who for a long time was giving out roles to pretty young actresses in exchange for sexual favors, as practically everyone knew but kept quiet about. Bill Cosby. Woody Allen. Jimmy Savile. Kevin Spacey. Hell, it goes back to Fatty Arbuckle and the old "casting couch".
Would normal people placed in such an environment turn into such monsters? I doubt it very much. I think the arrow runs in the other direction, attracting evil men to its orbit for the power, prestige, and the opportunity to force an endless parade of desperate, narcissistic young women (and men) to submit to serving as semen receptacles in exchange for the fame they crave.
It works the same in government. Lord Acton's maxim about "power corrupts" is flawed. Power attracts corrupt, evil people to it like a moth to a flame. They are already corrupt, and seek license to let their corruption flourish. Show biz is a sewer, just like government, and the people who inhabit both are worthless, broken, evil scum who are always to be disdained and never to be trusted.
I'm proud to say that when my beautiful young daughter was told by well-meaning strangers that she ought to be in movies, and had her head filled with dreams of being the next Emma Watson, I savagely crushed those dreams by absolutely forbidding her to take acting lessons, do any kind of professional modeling, acting, or singing, or have anything else to do with the sleazy, despicable entertainment business. She's now an accomplished professional and I don't regret a thing.
Both are likely speaking the truth, their "truth".
Blogger Temujin said...
Dammit, Jim. It wasn't even the original Star Trek.
True Trekkie nerds know that Deep Space Nine was the best Star Trek series.
Blogger Readering said...
This relationship lasted longer than the marriage (second of three) it ended. Why shouldn't she expect it would mean as much to Stewart as one of his marriages?
There is a difference between a girlfriend and a wife. The perceived increase in social cachet of wife over girlfriend is linked to the increased use of the term partner. For many people partner is perceived as more respectable` than girlfriend. I could very easily see the relationship not feeling as important despite it being longer lasting, simply because it wasn't a marriage.
I will not forget what our professor of pastoral care (in seminary) once said to me. If you are married and are becoming super friendly with, hanging out with, flirting with, emotionally involved with, physically involved with someone who is not your spouse it is because your current marriage needs attention.
Should he have? Should she have? Of course not. But it likely happened because Stewart's marriage needed work.
Both are likely speaking the truth, their "truth".
Yep.
Steward may have professed love, but he likely wanted and got sex.
She wanted a long term relationship... with a married man.... working on another round of infidelity.
He had the power and prestige in the relationship.
He was older, more "worldly".
She was a starry eyed kid. At that age "true love" is ever present.
No heroes here.
"Hollywood is a place where a man...etc., etc.
"Would normal people placed in such an environment turn into such monsters? I doubt it very much."
Why? Why does that seem improbable? People are the same all over...they really are. Most entertainers, actors, producers and other persons who work in the film profession are probably normal, everyday people, each with their human foibles, as we all do, but most are not depraved monsters. To the degree there is a sub-set of people in the entertainment business who are predators upon others, or simply hedonists or damaged people indulging themselves to their own (and others') damage and destruction, there is, I'm sure at least as many of the same in the population at large. We just don't know them. We don't know of them. They may not be in positions to act out their desires to the degree they might in an environment like Hollywood--or anywere else rife with people wealthy enough to not be hindered by everyday limits on their capacity to do or obtain anything pleasures they desire.
The only difference between people in Hollywood and the rest of us is the access and means they have at hand to live out their lives with fewer social or material inhibitions.
Also, people in the movie and entertainment industry and their behaviors are much more visible to the public at large than the home-grown pervs and and suburban hedonists who live in your town and or neighborhood or out in the boonies. Most of us have no idea and don't see what our nearby human beings are up to behind closed doors and everyday activities.
I would like to believe that Hassayamper is right about the entertainment field attracting a disproportionate number of corrupt and depraved individuals, and to a small extent I think he IS right. But on the whole, Robert Cook is much closer to the truth. Celebrities are just very visible and have the power to behave badly, the urge, or propensity, to corruption is as common as mud.
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