During the making of the action film Red Sonja in 1985, its two lead stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and Brigitte Nielsen enjoyed a passionate affair.
The attraction had been instant ‘and since we both knew that wouldn’t last beyond the movie, we didn’t hold back’, admits Nielsen now. ‘We wanted to try everything and so we did. There were no restrictions, no promises, nothing, and it was a great time in my life.’
Schwarzenegger may be getting it in the neck from all quarters at the moment, but Nielsen still has a few kind words to say about him. His 25-year marriage to Kennedy family member Maria Shriver has ended amid allegations he had fathered at least one love child, and he is alleged to have had as prodigious an appetite for women during that time as he did when he was single.
Opening up the ex-files: Brigitte Nielsen has had a lengthy list of lovers
He and Nielsen were an item during the mid-Eighties. He wasn’t married to Shriver at the time, although they were a couple.
‘How serious it was with her, I don’t know,’ says Nielsen. ‘He never spoke about her — and the way he was living his life with me, I felt I was the only one. Then I realised about him and Maria and, wow, I felt cheated. Maybe I wouldn’t have got into it if he said “I’m going to marry Maria and this is dead serious”, but he didn’t, and our affair carried on.’
Did he ever ask Nielsen to marry him? ‘Absolutely not’, she laughs. ‘If he had, he wouldn’t have become Governor of California.’
She may have a point. Six foot one in her stockinged feet, with peroxide blonde hair, an impressive bosom and an ex-file that includes actors Sylvester Stallone (to whom she was married) and Sean Penn (‘I haven’t had many one-night stands, but he was one and oooh . . . he was amazing!’) it is fair to say that Brigitte is not average political wife material.
But then she is not your average anything, which no doubt attracted young Schwarzenegger to the Danish ex-model. ‘Arnold at the time was a lot of fun,’ she recalls. ‘He was very professional and had a very sarcastic sense of humour. He told me at the beginning of shooting Red Sonja, “One day, I will become Governor of California”, and we were all laughing, but I had a feeling he would do it one day.’
Far from being the boorish, sexual predator he is being portrayed as, Schwarzenegger was, she insists, very romantic. ‘I was about to fly home to Copenhagen for Christmas and Arnold left me this gift. I won’t say what it was, but it was a beautiful over-the-top present.’
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Was he in love with her? ‘I think so.’ The speculation that he may have fathered further love children in addition to a 13-year-old son Joseph, by the family housekeeper Patty Baena, shocks Nielsen.
‘There’s more? It breaks my heart because he and Maria have four kids and you don’t just have a baby with someone else. I’m surprised Arnold thought he could get away with it and I feel bad for Maria.’
Then she lapses into cryptic mode. ‘One day I will write another book about what I know. There is so much that I’m not allowed to talk about.’ She sighs. ‘It’s not fair.’
For now, however, we must content ourselves with Nielsen’s current autobiography, You Only Get One Life. She’s certainly lived the one she’s got to the full, with the book detailing everything from her rise from shy schoolgirl to Amazonian model, taking in five husbands and four children.
She doesn’t gloss over unsavoury aspects of her life, including domestic abuse, alcohol addiction and a suicide attempt. It’s a surprisingly painful and sad read at times. ‘But I’ve had so many great times,’ she says. ‘You can come out the other side.’
A constant refrain in the book is the dichotomy between brassy, intimidating Brigitte, with whom we are most familiar, and the girl born Gitte Nielsen — the shy and vulnerable creature who comes through in her writing.
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‘There’s Brigitte and Gitte — two different people under the same roof,’ she says. ‘People want me in a mini-skirt, but when I get home, I’m Gitte who’s sensitive and in need of affection. Men didn’t really understand that.’
Her relationship with Stallone was a case in point. They met in New York during a promotional tour of Red Sonja, although they didn’t consummate their relationship until later at Stallone’s beach house in Malibu, California. She says they made love for the first time on a big chair. ‘It was weird,’ she says, ‘and that was not the most incredible memory to have.’
Within weeks, Stallone had offered her a part in Rocky IV and later proposed marriage. But she says: ‘Something changed when we got married. We went on honeymoon to Hawaii and Sly brought about 15 people with us — agents, lawyers, a whole entourage. I was devastated.’
Stallone commissioned statues of Brigitte which filled their garden. ‘To start with it was flattering, even though I had to pose for hours,’ she says. ‘And then it just became embarrassing.’
He was obsessed with her, she says. ‘And I think he still is today with all due respect to his daughters [Sophia, Sistine and Scarlet] and Jennifer [Flavin, his wife of 14 years].
‘He’d never allowed a woman to leave him and I was probably the only one who did. My girlfriends said I was mad because any woman would like beautiful jewellery and a house and a nice car with a man you adore.
‘I was 22, a Danish Viking who wanted to explore, but we were surrounded by people and bodyguards all the time. I’d say to him “You can’t buy me”, so I left him and he never got over it.’ They divorced in 1987 after 18 months of marriage, with Stallone downgrading his assessment of her from ‘the woman I’ve been waiting for all my life’, to ‘the ex-pain’. She received a £350,000 settlement, loose change by today’s standards, but struggled to find work in Hollywood.
‘I know he did certain things to make sure I was history,’ she says. ‘I don’t want to say he told people not to employ me, but for three years no one would even talk to me.’
Two sides of Brigitte: The brash and busty blonde says her softer side - 'Gitte' - needs affection and sensitivity
Photographer and director Sebastian Copeland became her third husband in 1992 and they divorced two years later, although Nielsen has claimed the marriage was never legalised.
The fallout from the split with Stallone continued to 2005, when Brigitte was a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother with racing pundit John McCririck and feminist writer Germaine Greer. A surprise house-guest was Stallone’s mother, Jackie, who had previously branded Brigitte ‘a slut’ and ‘a lesbian’.
‘It was a low blow by the producers, who wanted to stir up trouble,’ says Nielsen. ‘I don’t know what happened before we got married, but Sylvester didn’t invite her to the wedding. I think she didn’t want her son to have any feelings for another woman.
‘But the craziest thing was that in the Big Brother house after all those years that she’d been so mean, I looked at this woman who was old, eccentric and confused and felt sorry for her, so we buried the hatchet.’
Marriage to Stallone had, however, made Brigitte feel better about herself. In her book, she tells how she’d transformed from the gawky, insecure Gitte who had been bullied at school and somehow found the self-confidence to become a model. Then came movies and Stallone.
‘But deep down inside there is that part of you that wonders are you really that cool or are you that same old kid in school?’ says Nielsen.
How do Arnie and Stallone compare? In her book, she calls Stallone ‘the sexiest, most delicious man I’d ever met’. But she is also on record as calling Arnie ‘the sexiest actor I’ve known in real life’.
She claims that two of her former loves — American football player Mark Gastineau, with whom she lived for two years, and ex-husband No 4, Swiss racing driver Raoul Meyer — physically abused her.
Red hot: The couple may have had a steamy affair but Brigitte is shocked Schwarzenegger has fathered a child behind his wife's back
Gastineau, with whom she had a son, Killian, now 22, hit her and once tried to drown her by holding her head under water in the bath. ‘He was on steroids and spun completely out of control,’ she says.
Meyer, whom she divorced in 2005 after 12 years of marriage and two sons, Douglas and Raoulino, was, she says, also violent. ‘But most men are, darling, most men are,’ she adds. ‘They think it’s their right on earth that the woman is less than them and, trust me, physical pain does not hurt as much as psychological wounding’.
She says that she has been called ‘a fat pig’ and told ‘you’re a piece of s***’. When I ask her who said it, she replies that a lot of people did. But it takes two to tango. I invited myself to have every man tell me this because they fell in love with Brigitte Nielsen, and when I reverted to shy, vulnerable Gitte, they realised they could take advantage of that person.
‘I don’t know why I allowed it,’ she says softly. ‘I never thought these men would do that to me. If I knew from the beginning a man would be beating me from morning to night, I’d walk away. But I went in with an open heart, thinking “This is going to be great”, and all of a sudden things change.’
During her marriage to Meyer, she became an alcoholic and attempted suicide. ‘But I wanted to prove my marriage could work’, she says. ‘My parents were together for 36 years and I wanted the same.’ She ditched Meyer — live on an Italian reality show — checked herself into rehab and has been sober since July 9, 2007.
‘It wasn’t easy. But all of a sudden you see new colours and you’re so happy because life is exciting again.’
Five years ago, she married ex-model Mattia Dessi, who at 32 is 15 years her junior. ‘I worried about the age difference,’ she says. ‘I’m a realist and he is so young and gorgeous, but he was the one who wanted to get married. Now we are, I’d like it to be for ever.’
True love: Brigitte Nielsen wants to be with husband Mattia Dessi forever
Three years ago, she was filmed on a German TV show having plastic surgery. ‘It was because of being married to someone so much younger. After I had my sons Julian [by first husband Danish musician Kasper Winding] and Killian and done breastfeeding, my breasts just felt like skin and I was so upset, I got implants for the first time.
‘I’ve had a little liposuction and Botox, but even though I don’t have an upper lip, I look at my girlfriends who have had theirs done, and they can’t even talk, so I won’t be doing anything there!’
Brigitte heads off for a photographic session and her manner — friendly and outgoing — suddenly changes. ‘I look like a housewife,’ she declares, although the statuesque peroxide blonde in mini- skirt and stilletos in front of me looks every inch a movie star.
Is this the insecure Gitte taking over?
‘Please don’t make this interview about all the bad stuff,’ she implores. ‘I’ve had a good life and lots of great times and whatever people think about me, at least you can say I’m a survivor.’
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