Bette Midler ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images
Bette Midler was “absolutely” sex positive during the early days of her career.
“You know, you’re only young once. I had such fun,” Midler, 78, told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published on Friday, August 2. “I had a lot of boyfriends. We did it all.”
When asked who’s the “sexiest famous man” she’d ever encountered, the Emmy winner answered, “David Bowie. Mick Jagger.”
Midler, who dated her late manager Aaron Russo from 1972 to 1979, said her youth “was great fun until it wasn’t.” The actress, who first appeared on Broadway in 1967’s Fiddler on the Roof, recalled “everything” coming to a “screeching halt and life intervened.”
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Midler noted that the AIDS epidemic was one of the biggest factors in why her wild times suddenly stopped. “There were people leaving, dying, having breakdowns,” she remembered. “I came to a fork in the road, privately and personally, and I said, ‘This is not going to end well, so let’s just stop.’ So I did.”
The Hocus Pocus star said she “started trying to be a little more responsible” after the sexually transmitted disease spread throughout the U.S.
“It’s all part of growing up. Most people do grow up. And I did. It took me a minute, but I did,” Midler continued. “I married, I had a daughter, and nothing will tighten up your lifestyle like a child.”
Bette Midler Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Midler married Martin von Haselberg in 1984, and after 40 years together the couple are still going strong, thanks in no small part to their sleeping arrangement.
“Separate bedrooms,” she identified as the secret to her marriage. “My husband is a snorer. I used to be a champion sleeper. Not now. I don’t sleep at all. So I didn’t want to stay up. There you go.”
Two years after welcoming her and von Haselberg’s only daughter, Sophie, now 37, Midler starred in 1988’s Beaches. From there, her career continued to flourish with roles in 1993’s Hocus Pocus and 1996’s The First Wives Club.
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In recent years, Midler has once again become a household name starring in The Politician from 2019 to 2020 and reprising her role as Winifred Sanderson in Hocus Pocus 2. Her latest role is playing Marilyn in The Fabulous Four alongside Susan Sarandon, Megan Mullally and Sheryl Ralph Lee. Midler is well aware female icons are having a moment when it comes to the box office.
“There’s been a bunch of these movies, like Book Club and 80 for Brady,” Midler said of the genre. “It’s all women of a certain age. We’re old-timers who have been through a lot, are very well-known and kind of loved by the population.”
