SCREEN goddess Raquel Welch has told how she offered Ulster actor Stephen Boyd a nightcap in her bedroom after a night out in New York — and he turned her down.
The Ben Hur actor Boyd, who died of a heart attack in 1977 aged 45, was married to his secretary at the time of his death. He was born and raised in Northern Ireland.
Speaking in New York to a US magazine, Ms Welch said: “He was so hot with his cleft chin and he was so not interested in me. I tried to seduce him one time. I was so smitten with him and I was so excited every time I would come on the set I would see Stephen, and think, ‘Oh God, he’s so cute.’ He had what sounded like a Welsh brogue that was so charming.”
She added: “For my first trip to New York, when we opened the movie, we were both staying at the Plaza Hotel, so I thought, ‘Here’s my chance!’ So Darryl Zanuck took us all out to dinner at 21 and on the way back to the hotel we shared a cab. I said to him as we were going up in the lift, ‘So Stephen, would you like to come in for a drink?’”
When he changed the subject, Ms Welch thought: “He is not interested in me.” She speculated as to whether he was interested in women.
Boyd was married twice, to Mariella di Sarzana, whom he divorced, and then to secretary Elizabeth Mills from early 1977 until his death later that year.