Liza Minnelli details drug-fuelled affair with Martin Scorsese in new memoirs
Liza Minnelli has detailed an affair she had with Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese in her new memoirs, Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!
The tell-all book, published on March 10th, sees Minnelli explain how the pair “quickly got swept up in a passionate romance” during the making of Scorsese’s 1977 movie New York, New York, which starred her opposite Robert De Niro.
In the new memoirs, Minnelli, who was married at the time, said their affair “was the worst-kept secret on the set”.
She added of the relationship, “I got lost in amour fou, the French term for a passionate relationship that becomes a self-destructive obsession. The relationship becomes a powerful, hypnotic drug in every way.”
However, cocaine later became almost like a third person in their extra-marital affair, and it became clear to Minnelli that it was doomed.
Minnelli wrote, “Marty became a heavier and heavier user of cocaine. It seemed that it was no longer recreational for either of us. It was day and night. On the set, in between takes, and when we went out in the evening. We were constant companions, and I was right there beside him. Line by line.”
The star said of Scorsese’s substance use, “Marty claimed the drug helped his creative juices. Sure it did. Or is that just one more fabulous lie you tell yourself when you’re in the grip of substance use?”
Despite Scorsese allegedly claiming that it got his creative juices flowing, New York New York is not remembered as one of his finest moments as a director and was snubbed completely at the Academy Awards.
Minnelli also remembered an encounter with Scorsese, with her then-husband Jack Haley Jr present, in which he crucified her in Greenwich Village for having another affair with Russian dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, asking her, “How can you do this to me?”
She added, “Jack and I quickly walked away, trying to laugh it off. It would be impossible to forget. Marty was incensed. I’d been outed. Mikhail got caught up in a messy situation. And Jack now had a good reason for us to part.”
Minnelli and Haley Jr’s marriage officially ended in divorce in 1979. Meanwhile, Scorsese’s marriage to Julia Cameron, who he only exchanged vows with in 1976, was over by 1977.
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