Liza Minnelli
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04.06.11 The world’s Liza Minnelli: most ‘I will never controversial marry again’ fashion By Tim Teeman magazine When an By Lisa Armstrong autistic child becomes an adult The parents’ story He smoked dope with his father He crashed his son’s gap year He’s planning to go into space Will RichardBranson ever grow up? By Ginny Dougary Liza Minnelli at home in her NewYork apartment wouldyou ever marry again? ‘are you nuts? puleeeeze. no... my nerves’ Four husbands,three miscarriages, twohip replacementsand numerousaddictions… There’s onlyone Liza Minnelli INTERVIEW Tim Teeman poRTRaIT George Holz LIZA MINNELLI n the late Eighties, when Liza Minnelli’s recorded her “shovelling it in” before making “I don’t think you get married unless it’s fun on, this isn’t working. I want to feel better.’” Results album with the Pet Shop out with Mikhail Baryshnikov while still and you enjoy being with somebody,” she says How did she beat it? “Friends and AA Boys was released, my friend Dave married to second husband Jack Haley Jr. She tightly. “But I had also” − and she enunciates [Alcoholics Anonymous]. I’ve been going a and I would greet each other, arms has been married four times, finally and most this pointedly – “just come through brain long, longtime, everysingle day. It’s useful and outstretched and dramatically slurring scarringly to music producer David Gest, who encephalitis when I married HIM, so, ha ha interesting. Someone will raise their hand and our words, “He-llo, it’s Liizzza.” Like famously kissed her with vacuum-cleaner ha, THAT is all there is to say about THAT.” say something horrendous has happened, the her mother, Judy Garland, she snugly intensity at their wedding in 2002, attended by Has Minnelli missed not having children? next person will say, ‘My cat is shedding all fitted the old-school definition of a “gay a surreal barnyard of the glamorous and now “Sure, I mean, losing three babies, come over my furniture.’ We’re a bunch of friends, I icon”: distinctive voice, much married, a dead (Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson). The on, and one so late in the pregnancy...” She all over the world. It’s like going to lunch survivor of the twin demons of drugs marriage would break down with accusations pauses. “I had to give birth to that child. every day. It’s not some cult and it works.” and booze, a rollercoaster life lived with drama of abuse on both sides; they were divorced in It was horrendous.” Where did Minnelli’s demons come from? and joie de vivre, gay former husband, Judy 2007. At one point, Gest attempted to sue her She recounts how, afterwards, alone in the “Stuff happens to every kid, but not on the Garland for her mother... and a great hairstyle for$10 million, claimingshe beat him. Minnelli labour ward at night, she was starting to get so front page,” she says forcefully. “That was for drag queens to copy. Now, 22 years later, denied the allegations. Her representative says depressedfromthe effect of the chemicals, and very difficult, especially when they made in her Upper East Side apartment on a I will “lose her” if I mention his name. she heard a woman down the hall screaming. things up. Suddenly you read you’re drunk muggy day in New York, here is the star That turns out not to be so. When I ask So shetookherself off, carryingthe IV bag she someplace and you’re in a completely different emerging from her bedroom heading for me, Minnelli would she marry again, she exclaims, was attached to, to find her and held her hand, city.” She softens. “You learn how to live arms outstretched in simple black shirt and “No. Are you NUTS? Puleeeeze, my nerves, then went into the delivery room and helped your life. The minute my front door closes trousers, going straight for a kiss. “Hello, no. NO. Been there, done that; there’s no her deliver her baby. “It was such a moment of I call my friends, go to shows, cook.” She darlingghh,” she says with delicious, breathy reason on earth for me to get married again. hope,” she says. “‘Hope’ is a wonderful word: goes to dance classes with her friend Marisa ‘Peoplehavenoidea what I’ve gone through. Thosewho likedrama see drama; if someonevalues courage, they’llsee courage’ excitement. Big smooch. Dave, we had it Can’t have kids. It’s just a legal thing. I just like you just have to find it. I have 21 godchildren.” Berenson under the tutelage of Luigi Facciuto. spot-on – on the surface, at least. to have fabulous lovers.” (How many she has She laughs with gusto. “I love kids.” Minnelli’s apartment is in a large but not Minnelli sits down at the living-room table, is “maaaa business”, she says, switching to Minnelli’sviral encephalitis of 2000 wasthe grand block on a quiet, unritzy street. Joan lights a fag (the first of many, her only visible Southern belle.) “Do I have to be in love? No. most life-threatening illness she has faced. It Rivers, who lives nearby, presides over a mini- vice). Make-up’s a bit cakey but not OTT. The Some people do, or they don’t feel complete. wasfearedshe would not walk again, Isay.“Or Versailles of well-upholstered gilt. Another 65-year-old singer and actress is recovering Ihavethe giftofnot feelingthat wayany more. talk again,” she roars. “And look at me, I can’t near neighbour,the fashion designer Valentino, from a knee operation, but still working I’m happy.” Does she wish she’d been single stop! I don’t remember being frightened for has Meissen porcelain and pictures by Warhol trouperishly: late last year she released more when she was younger? “No, I wouldn’t long. After they told me I might not be able to and Damien Hirst on the walls. But Minnelli’s Confessions, an album of spiky love songs change anything. I can’t, so why bother?” walk or talk, I thought, ‘No, this isn’t right.’ place, while big (and with hidden doors linking streaked with that bittersweet knowingness Her longest marriage was to third husband “I knew it was possible to retrain another to unseen rooms), is spartan, more show- of hers, and has forthcoming concerts in Mark Gero, a sculptor, from 1979 to 1992. part of the brain to open it up. I counted the homey than cosy: you’d expect more London, Manchester and Glasgow where she “A wonderful man, we built this apartment stripes on the wall and said the alphabet over flourishes and extravagance, and their lack is will sing songs from it, alongside better-known together, we’re still great friends. I was friends and over. One day I said, ‘I’d like to try to telling. Her life may be known for drama, but standards, including Cabaret. Today, in her with Peter [Allen, her first husband, who later walk,’ and my doctor nearly fell over. Ha ha Minnelli does not revel in it, or fetishize it. greeting, her movements and speech, she came out] and waswith him twodaysbefore he ha ha. But it came, one step at a time.” She Her living room furniture is shrouded in white seems a little (not a lot) scattered, shaky. died[of Aids in 1992]. Jack [Haley Jr,her second won’t countenance thoughts of mortality: sheets, to protect it from her two dogs. GES: GETTY Is she OK, tired (as I’m told she is after a husband, between 1974 and 1979] and I were “Let’s talk about me, not me dying.” There is a vintage record player, a gift from PA fashion shoot the preceding day), drunk, on wonderful friends.” Which leaves the phantom She adopts the same forge-ahead attitude her half-brother Joey (the son of Garland and something, unwell? Or is this just service-as- of Gest.Isay that Irecall seeingher and David to her addictions. “People have no idea what producer Sidney Luft), and arts medals in glass S. THESE TO normal, wide-eyed Liza-with-a-Z? on an old Ruby Wax Meets... show years ago. I have gone through. If they’ve read anything, cases awarded to her and her father, the film Never far from one’s mind are Minnelli’s “David who?” Minnelli retorts. Gest, I reply. those who like drama see drama; if someone directorVincenteMinnelli. Proppedagainstthe many physical traumas – double pneumonia, Was the relationship fun at the beginning? values courage, they’ll see courage.” Can she wall of the main corridor are large prints of her viral encephalitis, two hip replacements, three describe her addiction to alcohol, for example? when she was so pixily luminescent as Sally miscarriages and, most recently, the knee “Let’s say you’re going out and it’s a stressful BowlesinCabaret (for which shewon an Oscar operation, the recovery from which has been From left, Liza Minnelli Mark Gero, 1986; situation. You have a drink to calm you down. in 1972); of her mother and father (“They’re slow and painful – and her demons. She has with her four husbands: and David Gest, 2002; It works for a little while, then you cross a so in love”); of Minnelli on a film boom with been addicted to Valium, sleeping pills, alcohol Peter Allen, 1967; starring as Sally Bowles physical-chemical line and it doesn’t work any her father, rumoured to be gay, who directed and cocaine: Andy Warhol in his diaries Jack HaleyJr, 1977; in Cabaret, 1972 more.