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. 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?
