Why is the heiress to the Getty oil billions bankrolling eco-maniacs hell-bent on disruption?
to come off. In 1985, Aileen had a fling with a man only ever named as ‘Gary’ who infected her with HIV.
That led to the end of her marriage, a descent into drug addiction and the temporary loss of custody of her beloved boys.
Her family’s reaction to the disease didn’t help — she said they were in denial. Her biggest source of support was her former motherin-law Elizabeth Taylor, herself an early and committed supporter of research on HIV/Aids.
Such was Aileen’s devotion to Liz she always referred to her as ‘Mom’, while her own mother she called ‘Gail’.
‘Elizabeth is the greatest. If it wasn’t for her, I don’t think I would have lasted this long,’ she said in an interview in 1996.
It was reciprocal. ‘I love her like she’s one of my own children,’ the late star declared.
Aileen threw herself into HIV awareness campaigning (she’s still an ambassador for the Elizabeth Taylor Aids Foundation), which brought her close to Princess Diana. ‘Aids has given me a purpose, in many senses,’ Aileen once said. ‘I was numb before; I didn’t know what to do with my life.’
In 2012, she founded the Aileen Getty Foundation, supporting a variety of causes close to her heart. She had a short- lived second marriage to American Scott Padilla, whom she met in rehab in 1990; and intriguingly spoke in 1997 of a third marriage to an unnamed Englishman. It clearly didn’t last, because in 2004 she married Bartolomeo Ruspoli.
In recent years she has kept a low profile. Her last significant interview appears to have been in 2015 for a U.S. magazine, in which she said: ‘The early years were very hard years and I don’t think I’m over that. I don’t talk about it much, but it lives in a very deep place in me that’s . . . still painful.’
She said her health was good, as was her relationship with her two sons.
As youngsters, they had been given instructions on the emergency number to call if their mother collapsed and were told to wear rubber gloves to protect themselves if she bled. ‘I’m a very lucky parent,’ she said. ‘ They’re both divine souls and we’re all very close.’
Philanthropy and activism aside, she does appear to have inherited some of the business acumen of her forbears. Founder of LA restaurant company Sprout, she’s a serial buyer and seller of highend homes, most recently a £19 million New York townhouse.
On the subject of her activism, she has been pointed but brief.
But she responded by email to the Mail last week, insisting: ‘I support climate activism through the Climate Emergency Fund
‘Aids has given me a purpose in many senses’
because we are out of time for anything other than rapid, comprehensive climate action.
‘We can have a fossil fuel-powered economy, or we can have thriving life on planet Earth. We can’t have both.’
She said she funded the CEF, which in turn made grants to climate activists ‘engaged in nonviolent legal civil disobedience’, including Just Stop Oil and Insulate Britain.
‘I do not fund these groups or their actions directly, though I am in full support of Just Stop Oil’s critical demand of no new oil and gas leases.’
As for the disruptive actions of those groups she said: ‘ If you accept that we are facing a widespread climate disaster, then civil disobedience does not seem so crazy and extreme.
‘Any discomfort caused by the protests we are seeing — which have been peaceful and nonviolent — pales in comparison with what awaits us all if we fail to act on climate.’