Shirley MacLaine Recalls Uneasy '80s Encounter with Donald Trump: 'I Got Out of There Real Fast' (Exclusive)
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10/25/2024 05:00 PM
The actress talks about her connections to a number of U.S. presidents in her new book 'The Wall of Life'
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Shirley MacLaine in 2023; Donald Trump in 2024.Shirley MacLaine has made dozens of films in her nearly 70-year acting career., so it's no surprise that she's got friends aplenty in Hollywood — and the stories to go along with them.
What's perhaps a bit more unexpected are the many political connections she's made along the way. In her new book of never-before-seen photos, The Wall of Life: Pictures and Stories from This Marvelous Lifetime, the Oscar-winning actress, 90, reveals that beginning with Harry Truman, she's met 13 U.S. presidents.
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Shirley MacLaine receives Kennedy Center Honors in 2013 alongside Carlos Santana (left) and Billy Joel.That's all of them since 1945 — except one. "I never encountered [Richard] Nixon," she writes. "I thought he was ridiculous and wouldn't want to have met him."
She adds of Jimmy Carter that she was "fascinated by his intelligence" and she "actually liked [Ronald] Reagan as a person very much; he was a show business favorite."
Related: King Charles Privately Congratulates President Jimmy Carter on Turning 100
And then there was Donald Trump, the 45th U.S. president and current Republican presidential nominee. In the book, she says she met him "at some function" in the '80s and extreme discomfort followed.
In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, she clarifies that her first and only encounter with Trump happened when she was looking at a space in the 666 Fifth Avenue building in Manhattan which Trump owned at the time.
"There was a vacant apartment in that building," she recalls. "I went up to look at it, and walked in because I knew it was available, and he was there. We met in a room where no one else was. In his head, I could see he was undressing himself and me, and I got out of there very fast. Didn't take the apartment either — and it was too expensive."
In addition to sharing memories about political leaders (she even dated one, the late two-time Australian Liberal Party leader Andrew Peacock), MacLaine writes about actually getting to be a part of presidential history at least once.
Related: Items from the Famous Night Marilyn Monroe Sang to JFK Head to Auction
At the legendary 1962 45th birthday party for President John F. Kennedy at New York City's Madison Square Garden — the one where Marilyn Monroe famously serenaded him with "Happy Birthday" — MacLaine and Jimmy Durante also performed together for the 35th president.
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Marilyn Monroe at John F. Kennedy's 45th birthday celebration in 1962.The book includes a photo from the afterparty and a scandalous anecdote about John and Robert Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, as well as a photo of MacLaine with the youngest Kennedy brother, Ted, 22 years later.
"Here, I'm telling Teddy Kennedy that story in 1984," she writes, "and he's laughing about how the boys got away with it all the time."
The Wall of Life is on shelves now, wherever books are sold.
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