Sir Roger Moore’s third wife – the Italian actress Luisa Mattioli – has died at the age of 85.
Family friends say the film and TV star, who was married to Sir Roger for 24 years, had been ‘ill for some time’.
Mattioli had three children with the James Bond star, who she met while filming the 1961 Italian adventure comedy Romulus and the Sabines.
The couple separated in 1993 and official divorced in 2002, after Sir Roger, who died in 2017 aged 89, left Mattioli for her best friend – Swedish-born Danish socialite Kristina ‘Kiki’ Tholstrup.
Speaking about the news, the couple’s oldest son, Mayfair restaurateur Geoffrey Moore, said: ‘Sadly, I can confirm it is the case.’
He was speaking from Switzerland, where Mattioli is understood to have been living at the time of her death.
Another family member said: ‘Luisa was ill for some time, so it has been a difficult period for all the family. Despite her acrimonious split from Sir Roger, they were reconciled before his death.’
Sir Roger Moore ‘s third wife – the Italian actress Luisa Mattioli – has died at the age of 85. Mattioli had three children with the James Bond star, who she met while filming the 1961 Italian adventure comedy Romulus and the Sabines. Pictured, the family in 1973
Luisa Mattioli, has died at the age of 85. The Italian actress was 007 star Sir Roger’s third wife. Pictured: Roger Moore after his wedding to Luisa Mattioli at Caxton Hall
Moore, who died in 2017 aged 89, left Mattioli in 1993 for her best friend, Swedish-born Danish socialite Kristina ‘Kiki’ Tholstrup (pictured together in 1995)
Born in March 1936 in San Stino di Livenza, Veneto, Italy, Mattioli went on to study at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia – the oldest film school in Western Europe.
Aged 23, she landed a role in the 1959 Italian drama The Night of The Great Attack, playing a maid.
It was two years later, on the set of the Richard Pottier film Romulus and the Sabines, that she would meet her future husband.
At the time Moore was married to his second wife, Welsh singer Dorothy Squires, who was on tour in Australia.
His first wife had been Doorn van Steyn, a taxi driver’s daughter whose real name was Lucy Woodard. Doorn was a 25-year-old divorcee and single mother with a blossoming career as a circus ice skater when Moore met her at drama school RADA towards the end of World War II. He was 19 at the time.
Doorn claimed Roger and Dorothy, who was 13 years his senior, had started their relationship while he was still married. Roger denied the claim.
Dorothy felt the sting of her husband’s infidelity when he struck up a relationship with Mattioli.
She was beautiful, emotionally explosive… exactly the sort of girl Moore couldn’t resist. He spoke no Italian and she spoke no English, but ‘language was no barrier,’ Moore said wryly, and Luisa soon became pregnant.
Luisa later recalled: ‘I met Roger in 1961 when we were filming together in Rome and Yugoslavia. It was after his Hollywood period – he had been unhappily under contract to MGM – and quite simply, we fell in love.’
They settled back in London, but Moore did not dare tell Squires he’d left her. Instead, it fell to his GP back in Bexley to break the news.
Moore, who died in 2017 aged 87, left Mattioli (both pictured) in 1993 for her best friend, Swedish-born Danish socialite Kristina ‘Kiki’ Tholstrup
The four wives of Roger Moore: From teen lover to running away with his wife’s best friend…
WIFE NO.1: DOORN VAN STEYN
First wife: It was at RADA that 17-year-old Roger Moore met his first wife Doorn Van Steyn, an ice-skater, who was six years older and had a toddler son
It was at RADA that 17-year-old Roger Moore met his first wife, an ice-skater, who was six years older and had a toddler son. She had appeared in several films under her professional name Doorn Van Steyn (her real name was Lucy Woodard). Moore was besotted, even learning to ice skate to be near her. They were married in 1946, when Moore was 18, at Wandsworth Town Hall.
His acting career stalled following national service and by 1950, he had resorted to posing as a knitwear model, and was living in one room with Doorn in her parents’ house.
Forced to endlessly tour as an ice-skater to pay their bills, she was disappointed in him as a husband and actor. ‘You’ll never be a star,’ she told him scathingly. ‘Your face is too weak, your jaw’s too big and your mouth is too small.’
‘All we ever did was row,’ Moore later said. Once, she emptied a pot of tea over his head. Another time, she dumped his clothes in the bath. The marriage ended with a blazing public row — when she bit his hand — outside a West End theatre where Moore was an understudy.
WIFE NO.2: DOROTHY SQUIRES
Wife No. 3: Roger with Dorothy Squires, the woman who made his career
Moore’s professional break came, not on stage or set, but at a drunken party at the Bexley mansion in Kent of singer Dorothy Squires, then the most famous female solo star in the world.
Her parties were famous for excess and sex, and Squires took an instant shine to the handsome jobless, 24-year-old who was 12 years her junior. He flirted with her outrageously and later that night took her to bed. She was smitten and vowed to make him a star in America, putting her own career on hold.
They travelled to New York in luxury on the Queen Mary, but since Moore’s divorce from Doorn Van Steyn — she learned he’d left her after she returned from a tour — had not been finalised, he went in the guise of her manager.
Through Squires’s contacts, he quickly got TV work and roles on Broadway. In July 1953, they wed in front of a very ‘drunken justice of the peace’ in New Jersey.
On their return to England, Moore, now with American polish and sophistication, got his first West End part. In the same week, two major offers followed — the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, and a seven-year Hollywood contract with MGM to make his screen debut alongside Elizabeth Taylor in The Last Time I Saw Paris.
WIFE NO.3: LUISA MATTIOLI
Wife No.3: Roger Moore in 1962 with Luisa, whom he met on the set of a film in 1961
In 1961 Moore flew to Rome — while Squires was on tour in Australia — to play Romulus in Il Ratto Delle Sabine, the mythical story of the Rape of the Sabine Women. His co-star was Luisa Mattioli, 28, beautiful, emotionally explosive … exactly the sort of girl Moore couldn’t resist.
He spoke no Italian and she spoke no English, but ‘language was no barrier,’ Moore said wryly, and Luisa soon became pregnant.
They settled back in London, but Moore did not dare tell Squires he’d left her. Instead, it fell to his GP back in Bexley to break the news.
She refused to believe it until she intercepted letters addressed to Moore from Italy and had them translated.
Squires, in a move that appalled even her close friends, refused to give her husband a divorce — and instead sued him for loss of conjugal rights. She stoked gossip further by hurling abuse at Moore and Luisa whenever she could — on one occasion, smashing the French windows of the home the couple shared.
WIFE NO.4: KRISTINA ‘KIKI’ THOLSTRUP
Wife No.4: Roger Moore described Kiki, pictured together, as his true love
Tired of arguments with the volatile Luisa, with whom he had two sons and a daughter, he left her in 1993, abandoning her at Geneva airport and later phoning to say he was in a relationship with her closest friend, a Swedish widow and socialite named Kristina ‘Kiki’ Tholstrup whom he married in 2002.
Luisa reacted much as Squires had before her. ‘He dead to me,’ she said of Moore. ‘He seriously mad. Now he is nobody. He does not exist.’
But Roger was sure of his decision
‘Kiki is my soulmate,’ he would say. ‘We are only ever apart when she goes to the hairdresser’s.’ Life at their home on the Cote d’Azur was wonderful.
The couple would potter in the Bentley from their Monaco apartment overlooking the beach at Larvotto to Le Michelangelo in Fontvieille for a seafood lunch.
In the evenings, they dined at the Hotel de Paris with friends including Prince Albert and his wife, Charlene.
She refused to believe it until she intercepted letters addressed to Moore from Italy and had them translated. They were from Luisa and graphic proof of her husband’s infidelity. One letter allegedly described Luisa’s wish to lick Moore all over, adding: ‘You say Dorothy does not believe in our love. Show her this letter.’
Squires, in a move that appalled even her close friends, refused to give her husband a divorce — and instead sued him for loss of conjugal rights. She stoked gossip further by hurling abuse at Moore and Luisa whenever she could — on one occasion, smashing the French windows of the home the couple shared.
Moore later said: ‘She threw a brick through my window. She reached through the glass and grabbed my shirt and she cut her arms doing it.
‘The police came and they said: “Madam, you’re bleeding”, and she said: “It’s my heart that’s bleeding”.’
Luisa recalled: ‘For eight years, this woman, this Dorothy Squires, would not divorce Roger. She is many years older than he is. She though his love for me was infatuation, that it would pass. And, of course, she was jealous. And I could understand that.”
‘She practiced – how you call it? – self-delusion. Even after out children were born, even after Roger and I set up house, she still would not divorce. It was very difficult for us. You can imagine. Difficult for me, for my family in Italy, for the children. And, of course, for Roger. No interviews. Nothing about his private life. No pictures of me, the children. Lies, whispers, gossips.’
Bitter ending: Roger Moore and Luisa in 1985. Luisa would characterise her replacement as ‘a hanger-on who’s had two husbands and three facelifts’
Moore, however, never got over his guilt at betraying the woman who made his career, and 30 years later, when Squires was dying from lung cancer, he paid for her care.
Once his divorce was finalised, Moore married Mattioli in a ceremony in London in 1969. They had three children together, Geoffrey, Deborah and Christian.
Geoffrey tried his hand at acting and starred opposite his father as a child in 1976 film Sherlock Holmes In New York and in 1990’s Fire, Ice And Dynamite. He went on to become a restaurateur and founded the popular Hush restaurant in London’s Mayfair.
His sister Deborah Moore also caught the acting bug after appearing in an episode of her father’s series The Persuaders! as a child and went on to star in 1992’s Chaplin and South Kensington in 2001.
But she is best known as the original face of the Scottish Widows insurance adverts in which she appeared between 1986 and 1995.
Their brother Christian, a film producer, last week attended a Monte Carlo film screening alongside Prince Albert of Monaco and Sharon Stone.
Geoffrey’s daughter, Ambra Moore, is also following in her grandfather’s footsteps and has landed her debut acting role in a movie, starring in thriller Nemesis about a criminal kingpin in London.
Moore, who died in 2017 aged 89, left Mattioli in 1993 for her best friend, Swedish-born Danish socialite Kristina ‘Kiki’ Tholstrup (pictured with Sir Roger in 2008)
Sir Roger was married to Miss Mattioli until 1993, when a diagnosis of prostate cancer prompted him to leave her and marry Danish socialite Kristina Tholstrup, who was in their social circle as they had neighbouring homes in the South of France.
He had supported the widow — a friend of his Luisa — in her recovery from breast cancer, and they fell deeply in love.
‘Kiki is my soulmate,’ he would say. ‘We are only ever apart when she goes to the hairdresser’s.’
Luisa reacted much as Squires had before her. ‘He dead to me,’ she said of Moore. ‘He seriously mad. Now he is nobody. He does not exist.’
Luisa would characterise her replacement as ‘a hanger-on who’s had two husbands and three facelifts’ and wrote in her memoirs, Nothing Lasts Forever, about how she felt betrayed by Tholstrup and discarded by Moore.
It was during this time, that Moore made his first phone call to Squires in two decades. Speaking of Kiki, she asked him: ‘Have you found the right one at last, Roger? Is this the one for you?’
Moore replied: ‘This is the one.’ He later settled the divorce from Luisa for £10 million, which she refused to grant for seven years. Moore and Kiki eventually married in 2002.
Hs children didn’t attend the nuptials in order not to hurt their mother’s feelings.
His son, Geoffrey, said at the time: ‘None of us can forget that Kiki was my mother’s friend and was welcomed in our home.’
Over time, though, Kiki developed warmer relations with Sir Roger’s three grown-up children by Luisa.
The statement they issued to announce their father’s death included the line: ‘Our thoughts must now turn to supporting Kristina at this difficult time.’