‘Dirty Dancing’ Star Kelly Bishop Opens Up About Past Affair With Married Man

Kelly Bishop knew when it was time to end a love affair that was doomed from the start.

The actress, who rose to fame on “Dirty Dancing” and “Gilmore Girls,” has written an autobiography, “The Third Gilmore Girl,” in which she details her decades-long career in showbiz and the pitfalls that accompanied it.

For her book, the 80-year-old reflected extensively on intimate memories that shaped her life, memories she had never shared until now. One of them involved an affair with a married man after she landed her first Broadway show, “Golden Rainbow,” in the summer of 1967.

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In the book, she describes her former love, whose name has not been revealed, as “a very successful advertising agent.”

“I knew it was wrong,” Bishop told Fox News Digital of the end of the relationship.

“You’re not supposed to do this,” she admitted. “Neither is he… I started thinking about his wife, who may or may not have known about us, who may or may not have had other affairs with him. I don’t know. But I knew it wasn’t fair to her.”

In the book, Bishop describes the union as “exquisite” and “romantic.” Only two people knew about it, including a “discreet” close friend and her mother.

At first, it seemed easy. In the book, Bishop writes that she never met or even saw her wife, which “made it easy for her to ignore her existence.”

But Bishop said she loved him “so deeply” that it “ended our affair.”

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“Just as I left Golden Rainbow, I finally realized that if this man’s wife loved him nearly as much as I did, I was doing her a terrible, incredibly mean disservice,” Bishop wrote.

“I had to say goodbye to him, and I did. It was painful for both of us. I think he was genuinely in love with me, too, and it broke my heart to hurt him. But I guess no one ever said doing the right thing would always feel good.”

The bishop told Fox News Digital that as much as she loved him, she didn’t regret breaking up for good, even if it meant walking away with a broken heart.

“If (his wife) cares about him as much as I do, he belongs to her,” Bishop said. “It’s not my place to do that. And it broke my heart anyway.”

“I was alone,” she said. “And it’s an unfortunate situation. You don’t see the person as often as you want to. You don’t have the freedom to call them and do all these other things. I just thought, ‘This isn’t going to lead to anything except more lonely nights and broken hearts.’”

“I just needed to get away,” she reflected. “I couldn’t go on like this. So I left.”

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After their relationship ended, Bishop became close to Peter Miller, a Broadway stagehand and electrician a few years her junior. She described him as “cute, sexy, charming, employed and single.” She was 26 and at risk of facing “the singleness curse” imposed by society.

The couple married in 1970. However, it was far from a love story.

“I think I knew pretty early on that he had a gambling problem,” Bishop told Fox News Digital. “(But) I didn’t think of it as an addiction… I had all sorts of negotiations with him. ‘If you do this, we’ll do that.’ I even made him see a therapist for a while. I learned later, through my own therapy, that you can’t cure an addiction through therapy.”

“If you’re an alcoholic, you go to AA,” Bishop says. “Unfortunately, there was no Gamblers Anonymous at the time. I didn’t know of one at all. I remember thinking, ‘I wish there was.’”

“I’m sure there are a lot of meetings these days, especially with all the online gambling you see on TV. But I guess I was very young and naive. I thought if I could just give him the confidence of knowing how much he was loved, he would be able to overcome this.”

“The only thing that happened was I was completely broke when I left that marriage,” Bishop said. “That’s what happened. It was tough. It just didn’t work out.”

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The bishop wrote that “it took two years, including a trip to the Dominican Republic, to end a five-year marriage.”

“At that point, it really wasn’t that hard (to leave),” Bishop told Fox News Digital. “I was in so much debt… Maybe ‘betrayed’ is too harsh a word, but I was kind of desperate about the whole thing… I wasn’t crazy about this person anymore.”

“He’s not the person you want to be with because he’s not trying to get help. He’s not trying to help himself. He’s just looking for the next place where he can make money. And of course, with that kind of addiction, and I’m sure with any other kind of addiction, there’s a lot of lying. And I don’t like being lied to.”

“I’m not kidding myself,” she said. “It can be a turn-off to someone. It certainly turned me off. So I felt just relief when I finally decided to quit… I knew I had to get out of the gutter I was in to get on with my life and make a living.”

Bishop eventually found lasting love. In 1981, she married television host Lee Leonard. The union lasted until his death in 2018 at the age of 89.

“The secret was honesty and love and support – huge support from both sides,” she said. “We were fans of each other. We had a great time. We loved each other so much and respected each other’s work. We both knew how passionate we were about our own work.”

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“I had someone who respected me, who supported me, who was there and who was really honest,” she continued. “We talked all the time, and we talked very openly. We had no secrets from each other. And I think it’s really the love and the respect and the communication that’s the secret.”

Today, Bishop hopes her memoir will encourage readers, especially women, to be “their authentic selves.”

“It’s important to be your own best friend no matter what trials and tribulations we go through,” she said. “Not only will it keep you satisfied with your life, it will also give you a good sense of… your worth. Hold on to that. Don’t let anyone shake you.”