Bette Midler
Ththe start opens up about the success of her Hollywood romance…
The room filled with applause as Bette Midler was announced the winner of best actress in a musical at the Tony Awards last month. But nobody clapped louder than her husband of 32 years, Martin von Haselberg. Beaming with pride, the 68-year-old performance artist and
commodities dealer kissed his wife warmly as she headed to the stage to collect her gong for her role in stage show Hello, Dolly!.
Today, the couple form a loving and united front, but they haven’t always been so in sync. In fact, Bette, 71, says in the early years of their marriage, they almost split.
Bette and Martin met in 1984, fell passionately in love and wed six weeks later in Las Vegas. Bette was 39 and a big star with an Oscar nomination for The Rose.
Martin wasn’t hitting the same giddy heights in his own career and was often at home while his new wife worked more than ever.
“We used to fight bitterly,” Bette says of their early days. “There were plenty of times we felt like throwing the towel in because it was so hard, with my working.”
Having grown up in what she describes as “dire poverty”, Bette says there was a lot of yelling in her home and not a lot of love.
“It made me self-centred as a result of not getting attention as a child,” she recalls. “If you’re neglected, you go for it elsewhere.”
So when she and Martin became parents to Sophie two years after they wed, they decided to work on their differences so they didn’t repeat their mistakes.
And that, says Bette, is what saved their marriage from an early demise. “We wanted to raise a really wonderful child,” she says of the pair’s loving longevity.
“We never wanted to hurt that kid in any way and we stayed together until it got better. And it did get better and it was really fascinating. And both of us, we look back and we wipe our brows and say, ‘What the hell was that?’”
As Bette continued to work, Martin became Sophie’s primary caregiver. “My husband is probably the greatest father who ever lived,” Bette brags. “He picked up the slack when I was on the road. He taught her a foreign language – and how to cook!”
Bette too, knuckled down to make sure Sophie had the childhood she herself could only have dreamed of.
“My mother didn’t know we were there,” Bette says of herself and her three siblings. “I was more hands-on, trying to make a well-rounded person.
“But it was Martin who provided Sophie with everything g she needed when I wasn’t there. When I was on the road.... he had to pick up the slack. He sacrificed a lot. He kept herr on the straight and narrow.”
After trying an advertising career and living in China, Sophie, 30, has now happily returned to her Hollywood roots, with roles in House Of Cards and The Wizard Of Lies.
Now it’s time for Bette and Martin to focus on themselves, doing charity work for the New York Restoration Project and enjoying tai chi together. “Martin’s quite a magical person,” the actress says. “He really is the wind beneath my wings.”
‘Martin really is the wind beneath my wings’