Hollywood agog over new memoir by means of Diane von Furstenberg’s billionaire tycoon husband by which he finds he is been dozing with numerous males right through their 50-year courting… whilst she as soon as bedded Warren Beatty and Ryan O’Neal in one weekend

Billionaire film tycoon Barry Diller first met the ‘deliriously glamorous’ model queen Diane von Furstenberg at a really perfect good Manhattan dinner birthday celebration in 1974.

On that instance the haughty Belgian writer of the enduring 1970s wrap get dressed snubbed the gauche film guy – as did her then husband, German playboy Prince Egon von Furstenberg, who in an instant advised Diller his trousers had been too quick.

But when Barry and Diane met once more months later, it was once an excessively other tale. 

The pair clicked and had been quickly within the grip of a torrid interest that spawned considered one of America’s maximum bold energy {couples}.

‘There was once a glow round us that was once atmosphere off sparks . . . I used to be functioning with out a mind, now not a idea in my head, being willed on by means of natural primitive urges,’ gushes the hard-nosed Hollywood government in a extremely revealing new autobiography.

Diller, who was once at the moment the 32-year-old head of TV and picture studio Paramount Pictures, and his 27-year-old lover had been inseparable for lots of the subsequent 50 years, ultimately marrying in 2001.

But their courting was once unorthodox within the excessive. 

She was once one of the vital global’s maximum sexually voracious ladies, described by means of pals because the ‘final flirt’ or even by means of Diller as not able ‘to take a seat down with out being louche’.

She loved a chain of flings with different males, together with an affair with the actor Richard Gere, which started in 1981 and resulted in a break up with Diller that lasted a decade.

In the e-book Diller finds he is been dozing with numerous males right through their 50-year courting… whilst she as soon as bedded Warren Beatty and Ryan O’Neal in one weekend. Pictured: Diane with Diller at a CFDA birthday celebration in 2000

Diller remains to be respected as one of the crucial sensible operators in Hollywood historical past however these days prefers to spend time on his 305feet schooner Eos, one of the vital global’s greatest crusing yachts. He and von Furstenberg are continuously accompanied on journeys by means of their pals Jeff Bezos and his soon-to-be-wife Lauren Sanchez. Pictured: Diane (l) with Jeff Bezos (c) and Lauren Sanchez (r)

Not that Diller was once a choirboy himself. The large revelation in his new e-book, Who Knew, is that he’s homosexual and loved common dalliances with males. 

Hardly sudden, then, that after the now 83-year-old advised his spouse, 78, that he deliberate to put up a tell-all memoir, she had simply 3 phrases of caution: ‘Just get in a position’.

Diller, estimated to be value £3.4billion, was once for many years one of the crucial bold males in Hollywood, incomes the nickname ‘Killer Diller’ for his skill to cut back even probably the most hardened executives to tears. 

But, in spite of his popularity, he have shyed away from the limelight.

And there was once just right reason why for that, as he has now showed: he was once frightened of being publicly outed at a time when being brazenly homosexual was once nonetheless now not permitted in Tinseltown.

Diller has claimed to be shocked by means of the excited media response to the revelation of his sexuality in his memoir printed on Tuesday, because it was once an open secret amongst Hollywood insiders.

But even they assumed that his union with von Furstenberg needed to be purely a wedding of comfort, a strictly platonic union.

As the artist Andy Warhol as soon as noticed: ‘I assume the explanation Diller and Diane are a pair is as a result of she offers him straightness and he offers her powerfulness.’

But in Who Knew, Diller insists that not anything may have been farther from the reality, describing their courting as ‘an explosion of interest that saved up for years’.

He relates how they might slightly stay their palms off every different when they met for the second one time at a soirée a yr after she first neglected him that evening in 1974.

Diller, who was once at the moment the 32-year-old head of TV and picture studio Paramount Pictures, and his 27-year-old lover had been inseparable for lots of the subsequent 50 years, ultimately marrying in 2001. Pictured: Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg in 2023

‘While there were a just right many males in my lifestyles, there has handiest ever been one lady,’ Diller says, including: ‘Yes, I additionally preferred guys, however that was once now not a struggle with my love for Diane . . . I’ve by no means puzzled my sexuality’s elementary authority over my lifestyles (I used to be handiest frightened of the response of others).’

Within 24 hours in their 2nd assembly, they had been on von Furstenberg’s settee at her palatial Manhattan condominium ‘wound round every different, making out like youngsters, one thing I hadn’t accomplished with a feminine since I used to be 16’.

She promptly ditched some other boyfriend (her courting with the German prince was once a wedding of comfort to hide the truth he was once bisexual) and so they reconvened at Diller’s LA mansion. 

In what he describes as an ‘explosion of pent-up call for’, Diller recollects them leaving pals by means of the pool to have intercourse in a visitor area.

Readers should come to a decision whether or not those stories of unbridled interest are Diller’s try to reassure his spouse their marriage hasn’t been a complete sham.

While he will not be a family title, in Tinseltown Barry Diller was once a person to be reckoned with. 

At Paramount he was once liable for giving the golf green mild to such vintage motion pictures as The Godfather Part II, Saturday Night Fever, Grease and Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

He later arrange the Fox TV community with Rupert Murdoch and taken us The Simpsons, whose vicious, bullet-headed boss, Mr Burns, was once reportedly impressed by means of Diller.

He finds in his e-book how he was once as soon as seated subsequent to Princess Margaret at a Hollywood dinner in a while after the discharge of Saturday Night Fever in 1977. 

The past due Queen’s sister stated she’d like to ask its big name, John Travolta, for tea at her resort. 

Diller duly organized a gathering just for the actor to bitch to him afterwards: ‘She hit on me!’ (Travolta was once then 33, Margaret 47.)

While he will not be a family title, in Tinseltown Barry Diller was once a person to be reckoned with. At Paramount he was once liable for giving the golf green mild to such vintage motion pictures as The Godfather Part II, Saturday Night Fever, Grease and Raiders Of The Lost Ark

Diller remains to be respected as one of the crucial sensible operators in Hollywood historical past and stays chairman of the virtual media corporate IAC, however these days prefers to spend time on his 305feet schooner Eos, one of the vital global’s greatest crusing yachts. 

He and von Furstenberg are continuously accompanied on journeys by means of their pals Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his soon-to-be-wife Lauren Sanchez.

It’s transparent von Furstenberg, who’s proud to be ‘sexually fluid’ having reportedly slept with women and men by means of the ranking, knew about Diller’s males. 

‘Today, he opened to the arena,’ she stated this week.

‘To me, he opened 50 years in the past. All I will be able to inform you is Barry and I’ve had an implausible lifestyles for 50 years. We had been fans, pals, married, the whole thing. And, you understand, for me, the name of the game to honour lifestyles, and to honour love, isn’t to lie.’

That’s advantageous for her to mention now – and Diller echoes her noble sentiments by means of insisting within the e-book that he by no means pretended he was once immediately – however the couple have spent years evading or ignoring questions on his private lifestyles.

A couple of months after their 2001 marriage, for example, she made transparent to Vanity Fair mag that rumours their marriage was once handiest platonic had been solely improper and that ‘the whole thing has all the time been commonplace’ of their courting.

‘We percentage the similar mattress,’ she stated. ‘We move on holiday in combination . . . It’s so bizarre that folks will even ask.’

A 2015 biography of von Furstenberg, with which she collaborated, detailed how she persevered to play the sphere within the years prior to she and Diller in spite of everything married

By 2013, when she and Diller nonetheless retained separate houses in New York, von Furstenberg was once sticking to the similar script when a New York Times interviewer discussed to her that there was once ‘numerous interest’ about their marriage.

‘I do not perceive what’s there to know,’ she answered. ‘This guy has been my lover, my good friend and he is now my husband. I’ve been with him for 35 years. 

At occasions we had been separated, from time to time we had been handiest pals, from time to time we had been fans, from time to time we are husband and spouse, that is our lifestyles.’

The following yr, von Furstenberg printed her personal memoir – however nowhere in its 240 pages did she cope with her husband’s sexuality.

Her previous coyness about discussing Barry’s bed room conduct was once without a doubt bizarre for a sexual adventuress who delights in retelling stories of her conquests and who Vogue as soon as dubbed ‘an unique cat lady seductress’.

In a 2024 TV documentary, von Furstenberg boasted of ways Mick Jagger and David Bowie as soon as prompt she sign up for them for a threesome: ‘I thought to be it and I believed: ‘OK, it is a good thing to inform your grandchildren, then I got here again to the room and so they had been two little thin issues, and I did not’,’ she recalled.

She additionally published that whilst as soon as staying at LA’s Beverly Wilshire resort, she slept with each Warren Beatty and Ryan O’Neal at the identical weekend. 

‘How about that? I used to be very proud,’ she stated.

The mom of 2 youngsters (by means of first husband Egon) added: ‘If I did not have children, I will be able to’t even consider what I might have develop into, as a result of I might’ve had no restraint.’

(Her daughter Tatiana published that von Furstenberg was once so remiss as a mom that it wasn’t till she went to a health care provider on the age of 21 that she found out she had a significant neuromuscular situation, Brody myopathy, that reasons weak point and cramps.)

A 2015 biography of von Furstenberg, with which she collaborated, detailed how she persevered to play the sphere within the years prior to she and Diller in spite of everything married. 

Leaving her two youngsters at house with the nanny, she partied at New York’s Studio 54 nightclub, the place male {couples} would have intercourse in again rooms and medicine had been handed round by means of bare-chested males.

While she’s denied being a lesbian, she admits her tastes have additionally run to ladies, particularly a heroin-addicted Italian twiglet named Gia who died of Aids within the 1980s.

In a 2024 TV documentary, von Furstenberg boasted of ways Mick Jagger and David Bowie as soon as prompt she sign up for them for a threesome: ‘I thought to be it and I believed: ‘OK, it is a good thing to inform your grandchildren, then I got here again to the room and so they had been two little thin issues, and I did not’,’ she recalled

Von Furstenberg was once additionally a typical at homosexual bars in Manhattan the place she’d move dressed as a person.

Why Diller has determined to publicly cope with his sexuality so past due within the day stays unclear and pals are reportedly bemused. 

(Some expressed equivalent confusion when he wed von Furstenberg 24 years in the past, even if if so it was once assumed to had been for tax causes.) 

He suggests it can be on account of the immense ‘guilt’ he nonetheless feels that he didn’t step ahead to check out to be a ‘function type’ for different homosexual males.

After an unsatisfied and remoted youth in Beverly Hills, with folks who ignored him and a drug-addicted older brother who bullied him (and was once later shot lifeless in a drug-related incident elderly 36), Diller had a anxious breakdown elderly 19. 

It left him with a crippling shyness which by no means totally left him as he battled his method up the Hollywood ladder.

It would even be interesting to understand when and the way he broke the scoop of his choice for males to von Furstenberg and the way she reacted. 

Diller, a person used to getting his method, is not about to show any longer than he needs, snapping to a New York Times interviewer remaining week that he had lower quick his promotional e-book excursion as ‘I’m really not up for interrogation about sides of my private lifestyles’.

Indeed, whilst Diller insists he is now ‘too previous to care’ what other folks assume, he glosses over the nitty gritty of his relationships with males. 

He writes sketchily of his first sexual come across with a ‘shaggy blond man’ who, from the terrace of a West Hollywood condominium, signalled to a 16-year-old Diller, sitting in his automobile at site visitors lighting fixtures, to return as much as him.

He does not stay both on his infamous popularity as a ferocious boss and industry adversary whose hair-trigger mood was once prone to explode at any time.

Staff at Diller’s quite a lot of places of work reportedly lived in dread of him descending on them. ‘There’s no tolerance for mistakes; Diller is understood to shred staff if his tea is not correctly brewed,’ reported the Tampa Bay Times in 2002.

Diller admitted to the New York Times remaining week: ‘I’m a hard supervisor.’

Whether he is additionally been a hard husband is for his spouse to come to a decision.