HOLLYWOOD superstars Kirstie Alley and John Travolta are so close they have a hole in the fence between their properties so they can privately access each other’s mansion.
They’re also the most high-profile, long-serving members of the controversial Church of Scientology.
And for a long time they were madly in love but never consummated their relationship — a fact that has added to years of well-publicised claims about the Grease star’s sexuality.
But in a deeply personal exclusive interview about her A-list leading men, the Celebrity Big Brother runner-up reveals she was the one to turn down her Look Who’s Talking co-star because she was determined to stay loyal to her then-husband Parker Stevenson.
She says: “John would agree it was mutual that we sort of fell in love with each other.
“I will say it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, the hardest decision I’ve ever made because I was madly in love with him — we were fun and funny together.
“It wasn’t a sexual relationship because I’m not going to cheat on my husband. But you know I think there are things that are way worse than sexual relationships, than cheating on someone that way.
“I consider what I did even worse because I actually let myself fall in love with him and stay in love with him for a long time.”
John and I would have devoured each other
When I ask Kirstie, 67, if she thinks her best pal is gay, she vigorously shakes her head and says, while swooning: “No I don’t. I mean, I know him pretty well — and I know the love…”
John had met his current wife actress Kelly Preston, 55, before shooting their 1989 hit movie and ended up in a serious relationship with her on Kirstie’s advice.
Kirstie explains: “When it became very apparent that I was staying married, he started seeing Kelly again.”
But when Kirstie continued her flirtation with John, 64, after filming sequel Look Who’s Talking Too, Kelly stepped in.
She recalls: “Kelly came up to me — and they were married then — and she said, ‘Erm, why are you flirting with my husband?’
“And that was sort of when I had to make a decision and that was pretty much the end of that.”
Now Kirstie is “best pals and kindred spirits” with John AND Kelly — and she’s convinced that was the right decision.
She says: “John and I would have devoured each other because John and I are so alike. It would be like two blazing stars that just fizzled out. John goes to bed at like four or five in the morning and wakes up at three in the afternoon.
“I go to bed at nine o’clock at night and wake up at five in the morning we basically would have not have seen each other. It would have been a disaster.
“And it turned out great because we’ve remained best friends all these years. They live next door to me! We’d come through the fence. It’s pretty funny.”
Kirstie opens up about her incredible life and all her legendary love interests in a fascinating new episode of The Dan Wootton Interview podcast, which can be downloaded now for free on all podcast platforms.
I beat it Sci way
The actress says of her battle: “I knew I was dying as a being. I knew I had done something now that made me not crazy Kirstie in a fun way but actually making me crazy.”
She followed the faith’s drug rehabilitation programme.
Kirstie explains: “Narconon is created by (Scientology founder) L. Ron Hubbard, so I used that technology to get off drugs.”
That was the turning point in her life and saw her become a lifelong advocate of Scientology, joining the church in 1979.
She explains: “It inspired me to start building my dreams back up and see if I could make them really happen and I did. It was the replacement I wanted.
“It was better than being high. It gave me back my sanity and my worth.”
The actress — who last week came second in Celebrity Big Brother — also reveals she called Patrick Swayze, her co-star in Eighties TV series North And South, “the last temptation of Christ” because of their mutual attraction.
“He was married and I was married, it was so hard to resist him,” she admits.
“So it was like fighting that temptation because I really liked his wife.
“It’s those kind of things that people would probably get divorces over and go off together.”
She last saw the Dirty Dancing icon three years before his death in 2009 at a charity fundraiser and had to leave because her feelings were so strong.
She recalls: “I was seated next to him and his wife at this banquet. I was so proud because I wasn’t fighting off the last temptation of Christ, right? But after about two hours of sitting there, I was like ‘I’m going to leave’ because then I was single and he was still married, it just wasn’t good.
“His wife asked me to speak at his funeral service and I was really happy to because he’s an amazing wonderful person – he had more energy than any person in the universe.”
Kirstie is probably best known for her role as Rebecca Howe in US TV’s Cheers. While filming, co-star Woody Harrelson would constantly come on to her — but she didn’t mind.
She says: “He would knock on my bedroom door and go, ‘So you want to come out and have sex with me?’ and I’d go ‘No’.
“He’s kidding, right, but if I came out and said yes I would have been having sex with him.”
In fact, Kirstie believes, the antics on the set of the iconic Eighties sitcom, set in a Boston bar, would be considered deeply inappropriate today, including her desire to take naked pictures of lead actor Ted Danson. She says: “When I saw him naked we were trying all different ways to break into the bathroom when someone was taking a shower.
“So my picture of Ted had his head cut off and then he was just naked but we did that kind of thing all the time.
“I guess you would not get away with it now, right? Someone would say you were sexually harassing each other. I would be in prison. Everyone in the Cheers cast would be in prison. No kidding.”
Guys interested in me are just too young
Lawyers did warn Kirstie and her co-stars on Nineties comedy Veronica’s Closet about sexual harassment on set, but she didn’t take the meeting seriously.
She says: “I had ‘f*** me’ written across my chest and like my boobs hanging out I looked like a total whore. It’s sad when you can’t jack around with your friends like that.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, Kirstie is concerned the current #MeToo movement has started to go too far.
She argues: “I think you do a person who has been raped a great disservice by saying someone pushed you against the wall and kissed me or patted me on the ass.
“And I feel like everybody got thrown into the mix whether they had done something of magnitude or not — and I don’t think that was fair to men.
She adds: “If a guy pushes you against the wall and kisses you just go ‘Stop kissing me’, end of story.
“Because if a guy’s interested in you and you’re interested in him and he pushes you against the wall and kisses you, you’re happy he kissed you.”
Kirstie reveals that she personally avoided any inappropriate conduct from male entertainment executives like Harvey Weinstein, who she labels a “pig”, by having one simple rule.
She says: “I made a decision that I would never meet anyone for a meeting unless it was during business hours in an office, so I did not go to late-night meetings, I would not go to someone’s hotel room at 12:30 at night.
“If something was going to happen there would be no witnesses.
“I never had any experience like that at all which made me feel at one point like, what is wrong with me? Was I not pretty enough?
“Am I not pretty enough to try and have sex with on a casting couch? It just never happened.”
These days, Kirstie, who is happily single, is only propositioned by much younger men.
She says: “The guys that are interested in me are too young for me. I’m not the girl that’s going to comfortably have the 28-year-old boyfriend. I not only don’t want a toyboy, I don’t want to have a holiday with my son who’s 26 and my lover who’s 28! I can’t do it. I’m a grandmother.”
But she adds with a wink: “I will always have fun with the 28-year-old boys. They’re fun, they have a lot of energy.
“The guys my age are like f***ing dead, they’re like night of the living dead. You know, they’re just boring, oh my God, boring, they’re so serious about everything.”
Cookie binges
She reveals: “I feel like I want to be thinner than this. About a year ago I got Lyme disease. I got a tick bite and for ten months I would be in bed for eight hours a day.
“I don’t think I’m unhealthy because I gained 30lb but if I kept going I’d be unhealthy.”
Kirsty was known for her svelte figure while starring in TV’s Cheers in the Eighties and Nineties with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson.
She says: “I was relatively skinny until I was 54. I got fat because I was eating just cakes, cookies. It wasn’t like two cookies, I would eat 12.”
She adds: “I don’t think I look good when I’m overweight. When I’m on the thinner side, I love the way I feel.”
Men aside, Kirstie has an expensive lifestyle to uphold, including caring for her unusual pets.
She says: “Well in some circles I may never have to work again. Not in my circle, I am very eccentric, I give a lot of money away, I spend a lot of money, I have 16 lemurs because I love animals.
“I do want some money. I’ve got to say so if you’re really, really sick and about 87 please apply. My ideal man would just watch movies and eat popcorn and tell jokes, that’s about it, and maybe we would have sex if we weren’t too lazy.
“That’s sort of the guy I’m looking for, which is actually a gay man, see?”
But on a deeper note, it’s only in recent years that Kirstie has had the confidence to realise being cheated on while young and glamorous was not a reflection on her.
She says: “This is so sick but when someone cheated on Angelina Jolie and someone cheated on Halle Berry I thought, ‘Oh my God, maybe I’m not so ugly.
“Isn’t that weird that you equate some man cheating on you because you think you are not f***ing good enough or beautiful enough.
"It took the most beautiful women in the world being cheated on, I mean it’s crazy.”
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