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

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

The actress, who made her mark on “Dirty Dancing” and “Gilmore Girls,” has penned a memoir, “The Third Gilmore Girl,” detailing her decades-long showbiz career and the pitfalls that came with it.

In her book, the 80-year-old reflected deeply on the private memories that shaped her life, ones she had never shared until now. One of them was an affair with a married man after landing her first Broadway show, “Golden Rainbow,” in the summer of 1967.

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In the book, she described her former partner, whose name was not disclosed, as a “highly effective advertising agent.”

“I knew it was wrong,” Bishop told Fox News Digital in an interview about ultimately ending the relationship.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she admitted. “Neither did 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 that he had. I don’t know. But I knew it wasn’t fair to her.”

In the book, Bishop described the relationship as “elegant” and “romantic,” and only two people knew about it, including a “discreet” close friend and her mother.

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

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

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“It was when I left Golden Rainbow that the truth dawned on me that if this man’s wife loved him as much as I did, then I was doing her a huge, unbelievably bad disservice,” Bishop wrote.

“I had to say goodbye to him, and I did. It was painful for both of us—I think he was really in love with me, too, and hurting him broke my heart. But I don’t think anyone ever said doing the right thing would always feel good.”

Bishop told Fox News Digital that despite her great love for him, she didn’t regret breaking up with him for good, even if it meant leaving with a broken heart.

“If (his wife) cares about him as much as I do, then it’s hers,” Bishop said. “That’s not my job. And it broke my heart anyway.”

“I was lonely,” she said. “And that’s an unfortunate arrangement. You don’t get to see that person as often as you’d like. You don’t have the freedom to call them and do all that other stuff. I thought, ‘This is absolutely not going to lead to anything except more lonely nights and more broken hearts.’”

“I just had to get out of this,” she thought. “I couldn’t do this anymore. So I got out.”

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After the relationship ended, Bishop reconnected with Peter Miller, a Broadway stagehand and electrician several years younger than she was. She described him as “sweet, sexy, charming, employed, and single.” She was 26 and facing the “curse of spinsterhood” imposed by society.

The couple married in 1970. However, it was not a happy ending.

“I think I figured out very quickly that he had a gambling problem,” Bishop told Fox News Digital. “(But) I didn’t understand it as an addiction. … I made a lot of deals with him. ‘If you do this, we’ll do that.’ I even had him go to therapy for a while. I later learned through my own therapy that you can’t cure addiction with therapy.”

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

“I’m sure there are a lot of dates 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 just gave him the confidence to know how much he loved me, he’d be able to get over it.”

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

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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, honestly, it wasn’t that hard (to leave),” Bishop told Fox News Digital. “I was so in debt… Maybe ‘betrayed’ is a strong word, but (I was) kind of hopeless about the whole thing… I wasn’t thrilled with the person anymore.

“That’s not the kind of 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 he can get some money. And of course, with this type of addiction, and I’m sure with any other type of addiction, there’s a lot of lying. And I don’t like being lied to.”

“I don’t lie,” she said. “It can be discouraging. It certainly did for me. So it was just a sense of relief when I finally got it out… I knew I had to get out of the gutter I was in to continue my life and earn a living.”

Bishop found lasting love when she married television presenter Lee Leonard in 1981, a relationship that lasted until his death in 2018 at the age of 89.

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

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“She was a person who respected me, supported me, was there for me and 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 that’s the love, the respect and the communication – that’s the secret.”

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

“It’s important to be your own best friend, given all the trials and tribulations we go through,” she said. “Not only will that make you happy with your life, but it will also give you a good sense of… your worth. Stick to that. Don’t let anyone shake that.”