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Lesley-Anne Down says that during production of the miniseries “everyone thought” she was having an affair with Patrick Swayze. North and South.
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In reality, Down told EW he was “out all night” with fellow co-star Kirstie Alley. “As friends, I’m sure. I can’t talk about it.”
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During production, Down met her third husband, cinematographer Don E. Fauntleroy, and the couple were married for 40 years.
Leslie-Anne Down’s explosive onscreen chemistry Patrick Swayze Offscreen romance not translated rough cut the star tells Entertainment Weekly.
blockbuster 1985 miniseries North and South Swayze and Down were shown as star-crossed lovers, but although the pair got on well, it was another one in the stacked cast roster – which also included Elizabeth Taylor, Gene Kelly and Johnny Cash – who caught on. dirty dance The actor’s eye.
“Patrick was a lovely man. When we were doing this everyone thought we were having an affair North and SouthBecause we worked together for a year and we were the cutest couple on screen,” shares Down. ”He spent a strange night in my room, doing nothing but sleeping as he usually avoids staying out all night with Kirsty. [Alley] Because they were madly in love with each other.”
“As friends, I’m sure. I can’t talk about it,” she adds.
Swayze and Allie in ‘North and South’
Credit: ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty
“But he’d stay out all night, and then he couldn’t work… He’d knock on my door at six in the morning and say, ‘Hide me, hide me.’ He came in, and I said, ‘Come on and go to bed,'” Down recalls.
Ealy, for her part, never acknowledged any physical relationship with Swayze during her lifetime – beyond kissing, at least. Swayze married Lisa Niemi in 1975 and they remained together until her death from pancreatic cancer in 2009. In 2012, Ellie said that she wanted to be romantically involved with him during the production of the miniseries.
“I was probably more willing to break up my marriage, and I wasn’t willing to break up her marriage,” Elle told barbara walters. At the time, she was married to actor Parker Stevenson, from whom she ultimately divorced in 1997.
In the same interview, Ellie mentioned her look who’s Talking co-star john travolta As “the greatest love of my life”.
She said, “Believe me, it took everything I had inside of me, outside of me, to not run off and marry John and stay with John for the rest of my life.”
Down says Swazi was a “lovely, loveable guy” who “didn’t deserve what he got.” She places him with Cary Grant and Elizabeth Taylor in a category she calls “SQ”, meaning “star quality.”
Whereas North and South Down may not have had a real-life romance with Swayze, but it provided him with lasting love. Don E. Fauntleroy, who worked as a camera assistant during production, and Down married in 1986, just a year after the miniseries ended. He would go on to collaborate with his wife again North and South: Book 3, Heaven and HellThis time as a cinematographer.
Reflecting on his 40th anniversary, Down jokes, “I feel like an old car with a lot of greased-up oil filters.”
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Down can currently be seen in the film reagan In a cameo role as the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. In conjunction with the 250th year of United States independence, the director’s cut is in theaters now.
“I had to try to evoke some kind of emotion in that woman because that’s all I could do, because I wasn’t physically able to actually look like her,” says Down. “I just wanted to get her spirit to the audience today. I mean, obviously, one will be judged by the people who remember her and the historical ones. It can’t be helped. I’m really proud that I got the chance to play such a wonderful human being, whether or not you agree with what she did, or who she was, or whatever. You have to see what she did and how she accomplished it, and how England changed under her and was seriously saved. You It has to be admired, not agreed with or disagreed with.”
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