- READ: Sir Patrick Stewart attends Vanity Fair viewing party with Sunny Ozell
Actress Lisa Dillon has accused Sir Patrick Stewart of incorrectly portraying their five year relationship as a ‘silly affair’ in his memoir.
Dillon, now 44, was in a relationship with the actor between 2003 and 2007, starting when she was 23 and he was 62.
The duo first met after being cast in Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s The Master Builder, when Stewart – famous for his role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation – was still married to his second wife, producer Wendy Neuss.
His first marriage to Sheila Falconer, who had two children with the star, had already ended following an affair with actress Jennifer Hetrick, making his relationship with Dillon his second to end a marriage.
Dillon said she was in her local Waterstones last autumn when she saw some copies of Stewart’s memoir, Making It So, before picking one up and searching for her name in the index.
Patrick Stewart (as Halvard Solness) and Lisa Dillon (as Hilda Wangel) in the production ‘The Master Builder’ at The Albery Theatre London
Dillon was in a relationship with the actor between 2003 and 2007, starting when she was 23 and he was 62. The pair are pictured in 2006
Dillon and Stewart started their relationship while he was still married to his second wife, producer Wendy Neuss
In the memoir, which will be released in paperback this June, Stewart writes: ‘And so, another divorce. I felt stupid and responsible … I had cheated on my wife with a younger woman – again … And just like my affair with Jenny Hetrick, my time with Lisa Dillon would also prove to be relatively short … In a life chockablock with joy and success, my two failed marriages are my greatest regret.’
Dillon told The Times: ‘The impression he gives is that our relationship was very fleeting – that I was a silly affair that broke up a marriage – and he got caught out.
‘But it’s not just about our nearly five years together – this is the most enduring friendship of my life. Or it was.’
Dillon said the pair remained close friends after their relationship ended, with Dillon even introducing Stewart, now 83, to her baby daughter six years ago.
In the memoir, Stewart blames the pair’s onstage relationship for creating fake feelings, The Times reported.
‘Life imitated art,’ the memoir reads. ‘I remember the warning I had received from an older actor decades ago, that if you keep saying ”I love you” to someone in a play, you can drift into believing the sentiment to be true.’
Dillon said: ‘I never imagined he would say that he wasn’t really in love with me, that it was an occupational hazard of being an actor.’
Dillon said she did not expect the pair’s relationship to be a main part of Stewart’s memoir out of respect for his current wife, singer Sunny Ozell, and added she would rather have not been mentioned at all.
Dillion said the pair had remained close friends after their relationship ended
Patrick Stewart and his current wife Sunny Ozell attending the 2024 Vanity Fair Oscar this month
The pair’s relationship was kept secret while the play was performed, with Dillon making her West End debut on her 24th birthday. ‘We were already in love by then,’ Dillon said.
‘Afterwards […] things moved quite quickly. It wasn’t that we got caught out.
‘It was a decision for him to go to America and end the marriage so that we could start a life together.’
Dillon said she now looks back on the relationship and that period of her life differently after reading the memoir.
‘I see my vulnerability in a way that I never have before. For the first time, I’ve thought, ”What did a 62-year-old man find attractive about me at 23?”’, she said.
Dillon said the relationship broke down when the pair were set to perform Macbeth together, until Dillon dropped out.
She described Stewart as a ‘workaholic’ and added that she became ‘extraordinarily lonely’ – but their split was ‘not a clean break’.
Stewart married his first wife, Sheila Falconer, in 1966, when he was 26-years-old and they had two children together, Daniel and Sophie.
The pair split in 1990 after he cheated on her with actress Jessica Hetrick, who he had met whilst working with her on an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The actor revealed that he did not have a relationship with his two children after finding it difficult to be the father he wanted to be when he was younger.
He told the Irish Independent: ‘I never thought that this would happen, but both my children are in their 50s – they’re not children anymore, they’re adults. And my relationship with them is practically non-existent.’
Stewart was also unfaithful in his second marriage to American producer Wendy Neuss, who also worked on the Star Trek TV show.
The couple became engaged in 1997, married in 2000 and divorced by 2003.
Stewart was married to his first wife Sheila Falconer (right) for 22 years before they split in 1990
Stewart cheated on his first wife with actress Jessica Hetrick, who he had met whilst working with her on an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation
He was also unfaithful in his second marriage to American producer Wendy Neuss (left), who also worked on the Star Trek TV show
Patrick Stewart, 83, cosied up to his wife Sunny Ozell, 44, at the opening night gala of Metropolitan Opera’s Dead Man Walking at Lincoln Center in New York City
Four months before the separation, Stewart co-starred with English actress Dillon in a production of The Master Builder, and the two were romantically involved until 2007.
Sir Patrick has previously blamed ‘confusion’ for his infidelity, saying: ‘Confusion. [About] who I was and what I was.’
In 2008, Stewart began dating American singer and songwriter Sunny Ozell, now 45, whom he met while performing in Macbeth at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
The couple started living together in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighbourhood and became engaged in August 2012, marrying in 2013 with Ian McKellen officiating.
The Laurence Olivier Award winner said he felt ‘so fortunate’ to have found love with someone so ‘sensational’.
He told the Metro: ‘She is an absolutely sensational individual. I’m in love with her, I’m impressed by her. She provides me with so much support and help, which I try to return as best that I can.
‘But I’m so fortunate that I’m in, well, I don’t mean to say at the end of my life because I hope that’s not where I am and I don’t want to be melodramatic, but her contribution to my life has been extraordinary.’