BetteBack: BETTE MIDLER SAYS MARRIAGE IS LIKE THE COLD WAR

Bette Midler says marriage is like the Cold War.
Article from:PR Newswire Article date:February 2, 1989
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BETTE MIDLER SAYS MARRIAGE IS LIKE THE COLD WAR

/ADVANCE/New York, Feb. 2 /PRNewswire/ — Marriage is like the cold war, according to actress/comedienne Bette Midler, who has been married for the past four years to producer Harry Kipper.

“Marriage involves big compromises all the time,” Midler told Parade Contributing Editor Tom Seligson, who interviewed her for this Sunday’s issue of the magazine. “International-level compromises. You’re the U.S.A., he’s the USSR, and you’re talking nuclear warheads.”

Laughing, she added, “To me, it’s really like that. When you’re used to being on your own, being single-minded and self-absorbed, it’s a big thing to listen and pay attention to someone else.”

Midler, who has a two-year-old daughter, Sophie, described her as “a walking entertainment center. The baby has changed my life in a really wonderful way,” she said. “I never thought I would meet anyone I was so fascinated with. This joy that radiates from her — this innocence and sweetness…I can’t look at her, touch her or be near her enough. I count myself so lucky to have her.”

Midler, who was close to her own mother but not to her father, whom she described as a dominating man who always put her down, said she finally came to terms with him, nursing him before he died in 1986. “I got very close to him,” she told Parade. “I just can’t play the victim.”

Discussing her career, Midler said she put too much emphasis on fame during the early days. “You know,” she mused, “it’s not until you get older that you realize how incredibly juvenile that quest for fame is. You say to yourself, ‘What was I thinking about?’ Fame is not what’s important. What’s important about work is skill and experience, the ability to create and make something beautiful.”