Sir Roger Moore, the actor best known for playing James Bond, died on Tuesday after a battle with cancer. Moore was married four times, first to the late actress and ice skater Doorn Van Steyn. The couple married when he was just 18 years old in 1946 and they divorced in 1953.
After divorcing Van Steyn, Moore married Dorothy Squires. That marriage ended in 1968, and he married Luisa Mattioli a year lather. In 1996, Moore got his third divorce. Nine years later, he married Kristina Tholstrup.
Here’s what you need to know about Doorn Van Steyn. She died in August 2010 at age 88. Her real name was Lucy Woodard.
1. Van Steyn & Moore Both Attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
Roger Moore in 1955. (Getty)
According to her Falls Church Free Press obituary, Van Steyn attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where Moore also studied. While in school, Van Steyn also worked as a model and began acting professionally.
She was 18 when World War II started. During the war, she gave birth to her first son, Shaun. His father was a Dutch bomber pilot who flew 88 missions in Germany. Van Steyn and Shaun’s father did not continue their relationship.
After her divorce from Moore, Van Steyn traveled to Israel, where she married an Army officer named Ami Solell. When that marriage ended in 1967, she moved to Washington D.C., where she met her third and final husband, Ronald Hodge. They married in 1970.
Van Steyn was survived by her husband Ronald, sons Shaun and Jody and three grandchildren.
2. Moore Learned to Ice Skate Just to Be Close to Van Steyn
Roger Moore in Ivanhoe in 1958. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
In 2012, The Daily Mail reported that Moore finally spoke about his first two marriages in a television interview with Piers Morgan. The paper reported that Moore was so in love with Van Steyn during their marriage that he even took up ice skating to be close to her. He told Morgan that she was a “stunningly beautiful girl.”
However, their marriage always struggled because of money problems. Moore was just a teenager when they married and struggled to earn money as a film extra and knitwear model. They lived in a one room apartment in London with her parents.
It also didn’t help their relationship that Van Steyn constantly mocked him and they often got into fights. “You’ll never be an actor. Your face is too weak. Your jaw’s too big, and your mouth’s too small,” Van Steyn would tell him, Moore recalled.
3. Moore Claimed Van Steyn Would ‘Scratch Me’ & Threw a Pot of Tea at Him During Their Fights
Roger Moore in 1968. (Getty)
In the 2012 Piers Morgan interview, which aired during his Life Stories series, Moore said that Van Steyn would “scratch me,” adding that, “She threw a pot of tea at me.”
As the Telegraph reports, Moore recalled a time when he was sunbathing and she threw a teapot at him.
“She storms off out of the room and I hear the bath running. I thought, ‘What a cow, I’m leaving her and she’s having a bath,'” Moore said. ”So I smashed the bathroom door open and she had all my clothes in the bath and said, ‘now leave me.’ I waited for them to dry. The marriage was doomed.”
Moore told Morgan that Van Steyn often caused scars and once went to a doctor with a slashed hand after a fight. “It made a change because normally she punched me,” he recalled.
4. Van Steyn Thought Moore’s Acting Was ‘Too Weak’ & Thought He’d Never Become an Actor
Another factor of their crumbling relationship was Van Steyn’s complete lack of confidence in Moore’s acting abilities. He told the Australian that Van Steyn thought he would never become an actor. She told him he was “too weak,” had a “big” chin and his mouth was “too small.”
Of course, she was wrong. Moore went on to become the more successful of the two, although Van Steyn did have a few roles. She appeared in the Israeli movie Ma’aseh B’Monit in 1956 and appearedi n 1951’s The Madame Gambles.
5. Her Son Shaun Became an Artist
Van Steyn’s first son is Shaun Van Steyn, who grew up to be an artist. Van Steyn never married Shaun’s father.
According to an ArtlingtonMotorCar.com bio, Shaun became interested in photography while in Israel. He traveled the world, living in Spain, Canada and Guatemala before he landed in the U.S. He studied photography at the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design at George Washington University.
Today, Shaun sells prints of his photography and artwork online. He is also the Outreach Director of Falls Church Arts.
