Liza Minnelli and “Goodfellas” director Martin Scorsese had a tumultuous, secret relationship with “more layers than lasagna” that led them both to descend into a deep hole of drug addiction.
Her new memoir reads, “Children, wait til you hear this!” Minnelli, 79, details how she fell in love with Scorsese while he was married to someone else on the set of the 1977 musical film New York, New York.
They both had “violent tempers” and things got so intense that Minnelli and her then-husband Jack Haley once ran into Scorsese in Greenwich Village – and the director reprimanded her because he had heard she had also had an affair with Mikhail Baryshnikov.
Minnelli has admitted to sleeping with a Russian ballet dancer.
“How could you do this to me? How could you do this to me!” Scorsese, now 83, yelled at her.
She blames infidelity on “amour fou,” a French term for a passionate relationship that becomes a self-destructive obsession.The relationship is a powerful hypnotic in every way.”
And drugs also took over the relationship.
“As we were filming, Marty started using cocaine more and more heavily. It seemed like it was no longer a pastime for both of us. It continued day and night, on set, between takes, and when we went out in the evening,” Minnelli wrote.
“We were always buddies, and I was right there with him. Line by line, Marty claimed that drugs helped him create, and that’s true. Or is that just another great lie you tell yourself when you’re addicted to drugs?”
The newspaper has contacted Scorsese’s representatives for comment.
During the affair, the “Cabaret” icon married her second husband, Jack Haley Jr. His father played the Tin Man alongside Minnelli’s mother, Judy Garland, as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. At the time, Scorsese was married to his second wife, Julia Cameron, the mother of his daughter Domenica.
“We were on a runaway train,” Minnelli wrote of the moment. “Nothing good will come of it.”
She recalls how an incident in Andy Warhol’s published diary emerged late one night when she and Scorsese showed up at fashion designer Halston’s Manhattan home.
“‘Give me all the drugs you have,’ I said, and he handed me cocaine, marijuana, Valium, and Quaaludes. Then Marty, who was waiting around the corner, came up to Halston and kissed him on the cheek,” she wrote. We thanked him and said goodbye. ”
Their film, on the other hand, grossed $12 million over its $7 million budget and took 22 weeks to complete instead of the planned 14 weeks.
At the time of its release, Minnelli admitted that the film “didn’t meet box office expectations.”
Her affair with Scorsese continued after the film’s premiere, with Scorsese asking him to direct her new Broadway musical, The Act, even though Scorsese had never directed a major production before.
However, Scorsese raised “red flags” when he walked into the theater, insisting on the use of a dressing room that directors never had.
Minnelli ended up having to fire her boyfriend, even though she “almost lost her life and it broke my heart.”
Scorsese, on the other hand, was “exhausted…and the constant diet of hostility and drugs certainly didn’t help matters. After all, his life was in danger, and he can now finally admit that he cheated death and ended up in the hospital.”
Minnelli writes that his friend Robert De Niro gave Scorsese “very tough love” at the hospital and told him he had to get back on his feet for the sake of his young daughter. The actor also convinced Scorsese to direct the film that would change both of their lives, Raging Bull, for which he was nominated for Best Director and Best Picture at the 1981 Academy Awards.
The affair continued even though Minnelli was still married and was missing performances due to the “steady influence of drugs and alcohol.”
And, Minnelli admits, “I haven’t gotten over all the bad feelings.” “Years later, I saw Marty at the 2014 Oscars and walked over to say hi. Unfortunately, he turned away from me. I was very sad.”
Minnelli, who has been married four times and calls herself the original “Nepo Baby” because she was the daughter of Garland and An American in Paris director Vincente Minnelli, also detailed how addiction was in her blood. Garland suffered for years before dying in 1969 at the age of 47 from an accidental barbiturate overdose.
Her lifelong friend Elizabeth Taylor told Minnelli, “If you don’t go to rehab, you’re going to die,” and in 1984 she was admitted to the Betty Ford Clinic.
The abstinence didn’t last.
After undergoing hip replacement surgery, she abused OxyContin, and staff found her collapsed at home in 2000.
“It looked like I had a big stroke,” she said. “Fire officials said one side of my body was paralyzed. My speech was slurred and the muscles in my face were flabby. Dr. Maurice Hanson, a respected neurologist, later told reporters that I had severe encephalitis, a sudden inflammation of the brain that could lead to death.”
She admitted to the press that she lied and said it was caused by a mosquito bite.
In fact, friends found 60 Oxy tablets hidden under her mattress and around her house. “I can’t remember how many prescription bottles I had in my bathroom and bedroom,” Minnelli says.
But she didn’t stop.
Minnelli writes about a time in 2003 when she got so extreme up with drugs and alcohol that she passed out on a Lexington Street sidewalk and New Yorkers who “didn’t care who I was” stepped over her.
But now, Minnelli says he has been sober for 11 years. She last entered rehab in 2015 at a recovery center in Malibu.
“This is a great personal victory in my life. But let me warn you, I’m not talking about a complete victory over addiction. Addicts are always either in recovery or on the verge of death.”
