Shirley MacLaine Opens Up About The Benefits Of An Open Marriage

Shirley MacLaine has long been vocal about her unconventional beliefs, but the Hollywood legend still says that the key to a successful marriage is to ditch the monogamy. People posted video of MacLaine’s recent sit-down with interviewer Jess Cagle during a Sirius XM town hall, in which the Downton Abbey actress said she had an open marriage with husband Steve Parker as far back as the 1950s. MacLaine was married to Parker for 28 years, but they both had many lovers during their open relationship.

“I guess you would say ‘practiced an open marriage’ in 1954, which was another lifetime. No one understood it, we did. He lived in Japan basically, I lived in America working, and this and that.”

Shirley detailed a life with Parker that makes it sound like they were more like really good friends and traveling companions than husband and wife.

“We’d meet up, always great friends, traveled sometimes together.”

Shirley MacLaine and Steve Parker divorced in 1982 and had one daughter together, Sachi. MacLaine’s daughter penned a scathing 2013 book about her life with Shirley, titled Lucky Me: My Life With—and Without—My Mother Shirley MacLaine. In an interview with 20/20, Sachi said Shirley and Steve were absentee parents who often left her home alone.

“[Shirley] was very absent. I was very lonely — very lonely. Definitely. And I still struggle with abandonment issues and loneliness.”

Shirley MacLaine’s daughter also said her father had a live-in mistress while he lived in Japan. In one of the most shocking passages from her book, Shirley’s daughter claimed that back in the mid-1970s, her mother pressured her to lose her virginity to her boyfriend while she waited with two sex therapists in another room. Sachi even said that Shirley and the sex gurus quizzed her and her beau when they emerged from the bedroom, asking them if they “achieved climax.” Shirley MacLaine denounced her daughter’s tell-all as fictional.

Still, some of Sachi’s stories ring true to MacLaine’s own accounts of her private life. The new Sirius interview is not the first time Shirley MacLaine has been open about her open marriage. According to ABC News, MacLaine previously revealed some scandalous secrets in her own book, titled I’m Over All That: And Other Confessions. Several years ago, Shirley also sat down with talk show queen Oprah Winfrey to dish on her unconventional arrangement. In her interview with Oprah, Shirley talked about her surprising sexual past.

“I had many love affairs; and a lot of awful lovers. I wasn’t into ‘sexscapades’ but I did try it once. I had three people in one day.”

MacLaine also did a little kissing and telling, revealing that she had intimate relationships with some of Hollywood’s biggest leading men back in the day.

“I had quite a relationship with Robert Mitchum. And Yves Montand — I was attracted to some of the directors…. And everyone knows that what happened on a set stays on a set. No one talked.”

Of her unusual marital arrangement, MacLaine acknowledged that both she and Parker had affairs. But while Shirley still says the arrangement worked for them, the actress is decidedly one and done in the marriage department. MacLaine has remained a single lady after her divorce from Parker more than 30 years ago.

“I had an open relationship with my husband. I had other affairs and so did he. But we were very good friends… I would never marry again.”

Watch the video below to see Shirley MacLaine responding to her critics on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

[Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images for SiriusXM]