Michael Bennett - Personal Life

Personal Life

In his younger days, Bennett had a relationship with Larry Fuller, a dancer, choreographer and director.

He had a long professional and personal relationship with the virtuoso dancer Donna McKechnie, who danced his work in both Promises, Promises and Company and finally won the 1976 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical in the role he had created for her in A Chorus Line. They got married on December 4, 1976, but after only a few months they separated and eventually divorced in 1979.

In the late 1970s he began an affair with Sabine Cassel, the then-wife of French actor Jean-Pierre Cassel. She left her family in Paris to live with Bennett in Manhattan, but the relationship soured.

Bennett's addictions to alcohol and drugs, notably cocaine and quaaludes, severely affected his ability to work and affected many of his professional and personal relationships. His paranoia grew as his dependency did. Worried by his celebrity and his father's Italian background, he began to suspect he might fall victim to a Mafia hit.

Bennett's last lover was Gene Pruitt. In 1986 both Pruitt and friend Bob Herr lived with Bennett for the last eight months of his life in Tucson, Arizona, where he received care at the Arizona Medical Center. Bennett died from AIDS-related lymphoma at the age of 44. He left a portion of his estate to fund research to fight the epidemic. Bennett's memorial service took place at the Shubert Theatre in New York (the home at that time of A Chorus Line) on September 29, 1987.