"Living with Victoria Principal was crazy. Her behavior was crazy - she’s the hardest lady in the world to deal with!"
Rock Idol Tells How Love For "Dallas" Star And Drugs Nearly Destroyed Him
Andy Gibb: My Crazy Life With Victoria Principal
National Enquirer August 30, 1983
By: Neil BlincowIn an exclusive ENQUIRER interview, Andy Gibb was pouring out his heart for the first time about his 13-month romance with Dallas star Victoria Principal - a romance that nearly destroyed him.
**Speaking with amazing candor, the rock superstar revealedthat Victoria:
- Lived in terror of growing old and had plastic surgery on her face - even though Gibb insisted her looks were perfect.
- Constantly worried about being kicked off Dallas - and was so 'paranoid' she needed frequent reassurance from the show’s executives.
- Fell into deep depressions and would cry "like a little baby" at night.
- Couldn’t stand it when other actresses were getting more publicity than she was.
- Agreed with Gibb to live a clean, healthy life - but then couldn’t keep up her half of the bargain.
- Set a wedding date with the singer even though "she was terrified of having kids."
Gibb, 25, got heavily into drugs and was shattered by a nervous breakdown that sent his career reeling after his breakup with 33-year-old Victoria. But now - 17 months later - he’s rebuilding his career with performances in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, and plans for a new record album and concert tour.
"I’ve got my act together, my head is where I want it to be and I’ve put Victoria Principal and drugs behind me," said Gibb, youngest brother of the famed Bee Gees.
Asked about a recent interview with Victoria in which she claimed the breakup was caused by his heavy use of drugs,Gibb told the ENQUIRER:
"With the devastation of the breakup, I just fell apart. I started to do cocaine around the clock and I never slept."
"But when I was with Victoria, I wasn’t using the amount of coke that she made it out to be."
Gibb met Victoria on the John Davidson Show, "and it as love at first sight for both of us,' he said. "John started asking us questions, but we couldn’t hear him. We were just staring at each other and talking."
"We moved in together a couple of days after that."
"But it took me about a week to realize what Victoria was really like. I thought to myself, ‘I can’t live with thisgirl!’"
"When I met Victoria she was in a depression. She was in the same situation as I was in later when we split up. She’d just come out of a (broken) marriage (with actor Christopher Skinner). She was very upset, very depressed around the clock."
"I couldn’t deal with it - I could never really deal with Victoria. But all I knew was that love is blind, and Ijust stuck it out."
Incredibly, Gibb said, the worldly, sophisticated actress is actually an insecure "very mixed-up girl."
"She’d sit in bed at night reading THE ENQUIRER and getting so upset about publicity that other actresses were getting!"
"There were nights when she just used to cry on me like a little baby because she was so scared - she didn’t know where she was going or what she was going to do."
"She was worried that she was stereotyped in ‘Dallas,’ that there was going to be nothing after ‘Dallas.’ Linda Gray was getting more money than Victoria."
Victoria was very paranoid about getting kicked off theshow.
"When rumors started going round about her being fired from the show, Victoria would call up the studio president or executive producer and go out to dinner with them to get their confirmation that the rumors weren’t true. Then she’d be a lot more relaxed for a week or two."
Victoria was eight years older than Gibb - and she worried that she’d get an image as an "older woman."
"I think she had a hang-up about her age," said Gibb. "Her ex-husband was about the same age as me. She didn’t want people to think she’d only dated younger men, though she did have a pretty good track record at that."
"Victoria has always been very concerned about her looks and her age and she’s been to great lengths, cosmetically, to make sure she looks good.'
"She was always worried about her eyes. She always thought they looked bad. I would say to her, ‘Victoria, you look beautiful, relax.’ I didn’t think there was anything wrong with her eyes but she was convinced she had lines and crow’s-feet."
"So we went to this plastic surgeon, Dr. Harry Glassman (the man Victoria is now dating). I waited in his office while the surgery was being done."
"I used to joke with her about her refusal to come out of her darkened bedroom for two weeks after the operation and she’d get hysterical. She wouldn’t let anybody in the room except me."
"She’d dead scared of getting old. That was her big problem."
The actress had amazing resilience, and could show up on the Dallas set with no sleep, look terrific, Gibb said.
"Victoria had to be on the set at 5 in the morning. I’ve seen her go a couple of days without sleeping. She could stay up all night and still turn up on time on the set. She never really looked that bad. That was the uncanny thing about Victoria."
Although he’d tried cocaine when he was younger, Gibb said he was "very straight" when he met Victoria. "But because of our problems, I got into cocaine," he admitted.
Gibb couldn’t handle cocaine, he said, so the two agreed to lead a healthy life together.
"But then we’d be at a party and I’d find she wasn’t keeping her end of the bargain. It used to make me really angry. I’d think to myself, ‘I’m being good. I’m staying off coke.’ But I never did confront her with it."
"We just kept a little battle going on behind each other’s backs."
"One night at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, we had both had a couple of drinks and we were in bed watching TV," he remembered. "I leaned across to Victoria and said, ‘Let’s get married.’ And she said, ‘All right.’ I said,‘Right now.’ And she said, ‘OK - right now.’ It was 2 in the morning. I called my manager Marc Hulett and told him he was going to be a witness. But then we decided, ‘No, let’s do it right. We’ll get the families there. We’ll do it in a church - somewhere like St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.’ We were genuinely in love."
But they split up before their planned wedding date, Gibb said.
Even though they never married, they argued about having children.
"She was funny about kids. She was terrified of having kids. I used to beg her for kids. She used to say, ‘If it was anybody (to father her child) it would be you."
"But she liked show business too much. She likes the social life. She didn’t want to be a homemaker."
Toward the end, Gibb could no longer take Victoria’s behavior. "We just started arguing more and more for the silliest, pettiest reasons," he said.
"The last night we were actually together was in March 1982 at the People’s Choice Awards. We were arguing and muttering under our breaths at each other. She got up to receive an award and when she came offstage she acted like she didn’t know me."
"Victoria and I went to pick up some Indian curry and went back to her house. We were fighting in the car and when we got back to the house we just started ranting and screaming and pushing and shoving. In the end it got a little physical."
"I stormed out and drove back to my house at Malibu Beach. That was the last time I saw Victoria."
After that, Gibb went off the deep end, suffering a complete nervous breakdown, he said. "I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t sleeping. All I was doing was cocaine. I stayed awake for about two weeks, locked in my bedroom. I went down from 142 to 110 pounds."
"It sounds awfully weak for a man to let a woman get to him in that way. But Victoria’s not just any woman."
Gibb stopped showing up for work on the TV show "SolidGold."
"The producers kept calling up, coming around to the house, sending limos for me," he said. "But I refused to go. I locked myself in and nobody could get me out." Finally,they fired him.
"I went through financial problems (because of all the costly cocaine he was using). If I’d gone on the way I was going I probably would have had to start selling things. I lost a tremendous amount of money by not turning up for work."
"I not only damaged my career - I almost ruined my wholelife."
But with the help of a psychiatrist, Gibb pulled out of his depression over Victoria. Now he’s rebuilding his career, with performances at Resorts International in Atlantic City and next month at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas.
"After that I’d like to start putting my next album together," he said. "When it comes out, I’ll go on a concert tour around America."
"I have TV shows coming up, offers of shows, scripts coming for films."
"I still care about Victoria, but I’m over her. All I’m thinking of now is my career."
