Kirstie Alley Had an ‘Affair of the Heart’ With Patrick Swayze: ‘I Think What We Did Was Worse’
Actor and television icon Kirstie Alley confessed she and Patrick Swayze were once involved in an intense relationship without having an affair. But she thought what they shared was worse than physical cheating.
Alley said they tried to keep from ”going down that road” in their relationship that would lead to trouble in each of their marriages. But a source claimed the Cheers star always felt Swayze was the “one that got away.”
Kirstie Alley once said she could have had an affair with Patrick Swayze
Swayze died from pancreatic cancer at 57 in 2009. And by then, he’d been married to his wife, Lisa Niemi, for 34 years. But according to Alley, she and the Ghost actor were mutually attracted to each other when they worked on the 1985 television miniseries North and South together while she was also married.
When Alley was on Celebrity Big Brother U.K. in 2018, she dished, “I would love to have had an affair with Patrick Swayze, but we were both married.”
“I kissed him and I wished I could have an affair,” she candidly added, “but I am a strong believer in fidelity.”
“When you get on the road, and you’re doing a movie, it’s very easy to fall in love with your leading man. Very, very, very easy,” Alley explained (per Entertainment Tonight). “Think about it … we shot North and South for a year. So for a year, you’re around this person.”
Kirstie Alley thought her connection with Patrick Swayze was ‘worse’ than an affair
Alley confessed in an interview with Entertainment Tonight that the spark ignited quickly between her and Swayze (per Us Weekly). She said they eventually fell in love, despite trying their best not to go “down that road.”
According to Alley, they didn’t technically have an actual affair. But she felt as if what they did was wrong because they both were married.
“I think what we did was worse,” she explained. “Because I think when you fall in love with someone when you’re married, you jeopardize your own marriage and their marriage. It’s doubly bad.”
Alley said she was friends with Swayze’s widow after his death. But she wasn’t sure Niemi knew how serious the real-life chemistry became between the co-stars on the set of North and South.
Kirstie Alley thought Patrick Swayze was ‘the last temptation of Christ’
On The Dan Wootton Interview podcast, Alley said she referred to Swayze as “the last temptation of Christ.”
“I was madly in love with Patrick Swayze,” she confessed. “Madly, madly, madly.”
After Alley’s death from colon cancer at 71, a source told Radar Online she carried a torch for the Dirty Dancing sensation until she died. “She thought he was the most handsome, sexy, king person she’d ever met, and each day on the set, she began to fall more and more in love,” they said, adding Alley always thought Swayze was “the one that got away.”
That insider claimed Alley “cried for months” after Swayze died and would watch North and South annually to reminisce about their time together. They claimed she always wondered “what would have happened if she and Patrick had not been married to other people.”
Radar’s source called the connection an “affair of the heart,” but Alley’s rep denied that claim to the outlet.
