Lesley-Anne Down says ‘everybody thought’ Patrick Swayze was having an affair with her, but he was really ‘out all night’ with this costar
Lesley-Anne Down says ‘everybody thought’ Patrick Swayze was having an affair with her, but he was really ‘out all night’ with this costar
Rance CollinsSun, September 27, 2026 at 9:41 PM UTC
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Lesley-Anne Down and Patrick Swayze in ‘North and South’; Kirstie Alley in ‘North and South’Credit: BC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty (2)Key Points -
Lesley-Anne Down says that “everybody thought” she was having an affair with Patrick Swayze during the production of the miniseries North and South.
In actuality, Down tells EW that he was ‘out all night’ with fellow costar Kirstie Alley. “As friends, I’m sure. I can’t speak of that.”
Down met her third husband, cinematographer Don E. FauntLeRoy, during the production, and the two have been married for 40 years.
Lesley-Anne Down’s steamy onscreen chemistry with Patrick Swayze did not translate to an offscreen romance, the Rough Cut star tells Entertainment Weekly.
The blockbuster 1985 miniseries North and South featured Swayze and Down as star-crossed lovers, but though the pair got along well, it was another in the stacked cast roster — which also included Elizabeth Taylor, Gene Kelly, and Johnny Cash — who caught the Dirty Dancing actor’s eye.
“Patrick was a darling. Everybody thought we were having an affair when we were doing North and South, because we worked together for a year and we were the lovey couple on screen,” Down shares. “He did spend the odd night in my room, doing absolutely nothing but sleeping because he was generally rushing in from being out all night with Kirstie [Alley] because they were just loving each other madly.”
“As friends, I’m sure. I can’t speak of that,” she adds.
Swayze and Alley in ‘North and South’Credit: ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty
“But he’d be out all night, and then he couldn’t work... he’d bang on my door at six in the morning and say, ‘Hide me, hide me.’ He’d come in, and I said, ‘Come on and go to bed,’” Down recalls.
Alley, for her part, never confessed a physical affair with Swayze — beyond kissing, at least — during her lifetime. Swayze had married Lisa Niemi in 1975, and the two remained together until his death in 2009 from pancreatic cancer. In 2012, Alley said that she had wanted to get romantic with him during the miniseries’ production.
“I probably was more willing to break up my marriage, and I wasn’t willing to break up his marriage,” Alley told Barbara Walters. She was married at the time to actor Parker Stevenson, from whom she would eventually divorce in 1997.
In the same interview, Alley referred to her Look Who’s Talking costar John Travolta as “the greatest love of my life.”
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“Believe me, it took everything that I had inside, outside, whatever, to not run off and marry John and be with John for the rest of my life,” she said.
Down says Swazye was a “sweet, sweet man” who “didn’t deserve what he got.” She also places him in a category with Cary Grant and Elizabeth Taylor in what she calls “SQ,” meaning “star quality.”
While North and South may not have yielded a real-life romance with Swayze for Down, it did bring her lasting love. Don E. FauntLeRoy, who worked as a camera assistant during production, and Down would marry in 1986, just a year after the miniseries wrapped. He would go on to collaborate with his wife again on North & South: Book 3, Heaven & Hell, this time as the cinematographer.
Reflecting on their 40th anniversary, Down jokes, “I feel like an old car that’s had a lot of lube oil filters.”
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Down can currently be seen in the movie Reagan in a cameo role as the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The director’s cut is in theaters now, timed in conjunction with the United States’ 250th year of independence.
“I had to try just to get some kind of spirit going of the woman because that’s all I could do, because I was physically not able to really look like her,” Down says. “I just wanted to get a spirit of her for the audiences today. I mean, obviously, one will be hugely judged by people that remember her and historical people. That’s not to be helped. I’m really proud that I got to play such an amazing human being, whether or not you agree with what she did, or who she was, or whatever. You have to look at what she did and how she accomplished it, and how England changed and seriously was saved under her. You have to admire what she did, agreeing with it or not.”
on Entertainment Weekly
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
