In the movie ‘Notting Hill’ a superstar (Julia Roberts) falls for an ordinary bookseller (Hugh Grant). Fantasy or Reality? The Post talked to women who’ve been there.
‘I never felt like I’d been swept off my feet,” recalls Lisa Marsh, 32, a Manhattan-based public relations executive who had an affair with Pete Townshend of The Who for four years. (They broke up in 1997 and Townshend remained married to Karen Astley throughout).
Sparks first flew between the couple in March 1993 at a post-party for Townshend’s Broadway musical, Tommy. Even though Marsh had a boyfriend visibly in tow, Townshend, there without his wife, gazed at Marsh across a crowded room. At the time she was a magazine fashion editor and was used to this sort of attention at celebrity-filled parties. ‘At first glance, I thought he was good-looking, but that’s not what drew me to him,” she says. ‘I was attracted to the [obvious] way he was attracted to me. Finally I said, totally joking, to my boyfriend, I’m going to go up and kiss him. I’ll be right back.”
The fact that Townshend was 20 years older than her didn’t worry her in the slightest. She and Townshend started talking about a book project on which he was working. Marsh, who was also working on her novel-in-progress, was entranced.
‘We stayed out so late talking, we closed down Lucky Strikes at 4 a.m.,” she recalls. ‘I kept thinking, ‘I haven’t had such a cerebral conversation in years.’ ”
They became friends and went out only as part of a larger group of people. But when Marsh broke up with her boyfriend a few months later – ‘It died naturally,” she says – she began dating Townshend. Throughout their time together he told her he was living in a different building from his wife. Now, she says, as far as she is aware, they live in different towns.
In one sense, Marsh says, she and Townshend had a perfectly normal relationship. ‘Since he [Townshend] was doing a solo tour in the United States, he was in New York for at least 10 days out of the month. People were never congregated outside doors waiting for him. We’d sit in restaurants by ourselves having dinner or walk up Sixth avenue, and no one would approach us.”
He never once, she says, made her feel in any way inferior thanks to her non-celebrity status. ‘If anything, he made me feel like the celebrity, the special one in the relationship.”
But she couldn’t help feeling ill at ease whenever Townshend was on tour. ‘The first time I ever left a concert with him at Beacon Theater, we walked outside to find a total mash of people screaming and pushing all the way down to Lincoln Square,” she recalls. ‘We were literally surrounded by security guards. It was surreal for me.”
Although Marsh occasionally took a long weekend to tour with Townshend, her work schedule usually forced her to stay in New York. But she never questioned his fidelity – ‘I knew there were always going to be women throwing themselves at him, but we had a strong level of trust in our relationship.”
Marsh declined to discuss her sex life with the rock star, saying, ‘I wasn’t just some girl in New York for him – we really came from the same place emotionally. If we hadn’t, our relationship never would have lasted as long as it did.”
Still, it was never what you’d call a ‘normal” relationship.
She says: ‘We were hardly ever in a situation where we would do normal things together, like lie around on a Sunday afternoon doing laundry or cook dinner together in my apartment. Everything we did was glam and fab – sipping champagne in his hotel suite, attending parties until 4 a.m., attending a Broadway show’s opening night. We’d go to bed at 3 a.m., and I’d get up at 8 a.m. and leave his hotel room to head into my office. After a while you long for the comfort of everyday ordinariness.”
Eventually they split – amicably. Marsh attributes the end of the relationship to the age difference and the fact that Townshend’s ultimate roots were in London.
But she has few regrets. ‘My experiences with him exposed me to a world I might not have seen otherwise,” she explains. ‘After we broke up I went to work in public relations and started doing big promotions dealing with celebs. My experiences with him gave me a very good foundation to build on – I understood the psychology of celebs a lot more than if I’d just been Lisa Marsh, fashion editor.”
While Marsh was able to fall in love with Townshend and hold onto her own identity, others say it isn’t always so easy.
‘I would have enjoyed dating Ziggy Marley a lot more if he wasn’t famous,” says one twentysomething New York woman who didn’t want to be named but who had a brief romance with the musician while she was at college in California. After meeting Marley following one of his concerts, she saw him about a dozen times in the next six months, either visiting him in Jamaica or meeting up with him when he was on the West Coast.
‘Whenever we were alone, I felt like we were connecting on an individual level and that he really respected me,” she recalls. ‘But it was difficult hanging out with him when others were around. People would fawn on him and treat him like he was royalty – and I had trouble with that.”
The relationship eventually ended when the woman was watching MTV and found out that Marley had gotten his ex-girlfriend, Lorraine Bogle, pregnant.
‘I wasn’t surprised,” she shrugs. ‘As much as I’d enjoyed hanging out with him, I knew I couldn’t trust him. He was at the point in his career where he was becoming very famous, and he was so taken with his celebrity that he was completely noncommittal with everything else in his life – including his relationships.”
But whether a celeb is paired up with an ordinary civilian for three months or 10 years, celebrity psychologists say the reason for such couplings is often the same: to be with a partner who provides unconditional stability and support.
‘Most successful Hollywood marriages are the ones where a celebrity is married to a non-celebrity spouse,” says Lilian Glass, a New York celebrity psychologist.
Take, for example, Rob Lowe’s marriage to former makeup artist Sheryl Lowe.
‘It’s difficult to have more than one star per family. When two celebrities marry, there’s often a modicum of competition. And when one is worried about their own job prospects or talent, it’s hard to give the other the support they need.”
But other experts say there are often hidden perils for mere mortals who become involved in a celebrity relationship.
‘Celebs tend to be fairly insecure due to the ups and downs of their career and are often very self-absorbed, so it’s easy for their partners to find themselves alone,” warns Mark Goulston, M.D., a Los Angeles celebrity psychiatrist and couples counselor at (MD+IT)iVillage.com(MD-IT). ‘You can end up sacrificing a lot, leading to resentment which can turn into real hostility and be a relationship killer.”
Another potential pitfall: The feeling that next to your superstar spouse, you’re invisible.
The key to avoiding these problems is to keep your own life, insists Lisa Marsh. ‘I never once felt like my life came second to Townshend’s rock ‘n’ roll career,” she reflects. ‘I think one reason he respected me so much was that I made clear to him that I was independent and had a full life that could never be overwhelmed by his. He’d always been used to people being at his beck and call, but I wouldn’t just rearrange my schedule for him. And Pete respected that.”