| She’s one of film’s greatest beauties – but spurned would-be lovers from Sinatra and Brando to Steve McQueen. Now Jacqueline Bisset has finally found her perfect man |
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For many years, it has been a
source of wonder in Hollywood
circles that, despite being labelled
the world’s most beautiful woman,
no man has ever been able to
tie Jacqueline Bisset down. And a
fair few have tried. Over the
years, Bisset, who at 63 still has the high
cheekbones, voluptuous figure and vivid sea-green
eyes that made her one of the most celebrated
sex sirens of her generation, has been linked to
some of Hollywood’s most desirable men.
She famously turned down a dinner invitation from Frank Sinatra and a dance with Marlon Brando. Long-term relationships with actors Michael Sarrazin and Vincent Perez, film producer Victor Drai, and Russian ballet dancer Alexander Godunov – who died after an alcoholic binge surrounded by smashed photographs of Bisset – all fell by the wayside. But having reached pensionable age, Bisset is now enjoying her most successful love affair yet. Fourteen years into her relationship with Turkish martial arts master Emin Boztepe, who is 18 years her junior, the actress makes the rather startling confession, ‘I think it would be wonderful to be married to Emin – we’ll have to see what happens.’ It’s not hard to see the attraction. Boztepe is dark, handsome, and has the body of a god. ‘He is certainly gorgeous and he’s a great guy,’ she says. Boztepe is 45, but Bisset insists that the age gap is ‘not a big issue. It just depends on what you have in common and, although Emin is much younger, he’s a very mature man. There are things that are different about someone who is not of the same generation as you: they don’t know everything you know; they look at things differently, but things can work out just fine.’ Bisset clearly feels comfortable growing older. She is famously free from plastic surgery and Botox – she doesn’t even believe in facials. ‘I have never had any cosmetic surgery,’ she says, touching her face. ‘I’ve never worried about age. I don’t think all the nips and tucks look good. If these women who’ve had work done looked sideways in the mirror, they would see that they get a stiff curtain across their face. I think they do it because they are terrified of not being loved and of other people’s opinions. Things on my body are not up as much as they used to be, and that’s a bore. So I just smile more, which helps. I am becoming a fuller person as I get older.’ Bisset’s acting career has spanned four decades, since she shot to fame in 1968 as Steve McQueen’s girlfriend in Bullitt, and she has starred alongside such leading men as Peter Sellers, Albert Finney, Charles Bronson and Paul Newman. ‘I thought Charlie was a dish, a wonderful man,’ she says. ‘Albert is a little bombastic, but he has a twinkle in the eye. He treats me like an ex-wife. Paul is so handsome. I like him because he laughs at his own jokes.’ Rumours of an on-set affair with McQueen are, she says, untrue. ‘It was exciting working with him. But he was a hip American and I was very English. His phrases would drive me nuts. I didn’t know what a dude was or a soul chick. I did find him attractive, but a little bit scary. He’d get on his bike and take off like a wild alley cat; that was his escape from fame.’ She turned down Sinatra’s dinner invitation, she says, because ‘he had a pretty hot reputation and my good girl English upbringing came out.’ And her brush with Brando, whom she describes as ‘sexy’, came about in a German nightclub, where she had gone with another man. ‘My friend went to the loo and Marlon walked over and asked me to dance. I thought, “If I was out with a guy and found him dancing with Brigitte Bardot, I would be p****d off,” so I said no. He just smiled and walked away.’ Finding lasting love with Boztepe has come too late, of course, for Bisset to have children - although she counts Angelina Jolie among her godchildren, thanks to her friendship with Jon Voight, Jolie’s father. However, she admits that they aren’t close, claiming pressures of work, although Jolie’s very public falling out with her father may have had something to do with it. ‘I don’t regret not having children,’ says Bisset. ‘I am very much at peace with that. Perhaps I do have that occasional twinge, but you can’t do everything.’ Certainly caring for her sick mother, Arlette, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when Bisset was l5, meant marriage and children were something to be dealt with later. When Bisset’s doctor father, Max, abandoned the family home, he left his daughter to pick up the pieces. ‘I would come home from school, run the house, look after my mother and cook,’ she says. ‘The stress was sometimes overwhelming. I took care of her for almost 40 years, until she died in 1999, and it was tough, but it gave me so much humility and compassion. My mother was so funny and sweet. I never knew if she was going to bite or kiss me, but I miss her. I feel I haven’t done much in my life that’s really important, but at least I made one person happy. It taught me so much.’ Bisset was born in Weybridge, Surrey, in 1944, where her French mother had been evacuated during World War I[I]. When the war ended, the family moved to a 400-year-old cottage in Tilehurst near Reading in Berkshire, where Bisset was raised alongside her brother, Max. She describes her childhood as ‘shambolic’ and her home ‘chaotic’. ‘Not one newspaper that came into the house ever left it. There were masses of books everywhere and furniture enough for three homes. My brother and I were extremely upset by it – and have now turned into clean freaks.’ Cinema was her escape. Aged 15, Bisset decided she wanted to act and her father, who died from a brain tumour, aged 71, told her she could become an actress as long as she didn’t ‘bore us talking about it’. Bisset began to live a doubIe life, caring for her mother at home, but flitting to London to work. ’I grew up in a small town, so it was thrilling to come to London in the 1960s. Everyone was experimenting and having fun. We would go to Soho and meet all those incredible image changers: Roman Polanski, David Bailey, The Beatles, Ursula Andress and Terence Stamp, who is still a close friend.’ Her first film role was in The Knack when she was 20. Polanski saw her, told her to lose weight, and offered her a part in his film Cul-de-Sac. She was then given a contract with 20th Century Fox and moved to Hollywood, paying for a nurse to care for her mother in England. Arlette was a frequent visitor to Bisset’s home in Benedict Canyon, which she bought in l970 and where she still lives. Dozens of films followed, including the Bond spoof Casino Royale (she played Miss Goodthighs), Murder On The Orient Express and The Detective with Sinatra. Bisset soon became famed for her beauty, and caused a sensation when she appeared in the l977 film The Deep, swimming underwater dressed in a clinging wet, see-through T-shirt. Newsweek magazine put Bisset on the cover, calling her ‘The Most Beautiful Screen Actress of our Time’. Bisset laughs at the description. Her memory of that time was far less glamourous – she was preoccupied with her mother. ‘I didn’t see myself a sex symbol. I was a cook and cleaning lady, and a frantic floor washer.’ When she looks back, she sometimes wishes she could have enjoyed the moment a bit more. ‘I look at photos of myself and think, “God, if I had realised I was so cute, I would have been naughtier!” But you could put any woman in a wet T-shirt and men would lust after her.’ In fact, Bisset found the attention more uncomfortable than flattering. ‘Men were looking at my chest whenever they said hello,’ she says. In the end, then, she has no regrets about the way her life has turned out. Living in the moment is more her style. ‘I have a very fulfilling life with good friends and I enjoy my work.’ There is a Buddhist mantra Bisset likes to quote that reflects her outlook on life. ‘Do what is in front of you’, which means, she says, ‘Get on with what you have. It’s the only reality you have – the now.’ |