Susan Sarandon looks back on her last conversations with former lover David Bowie: 'We said things that needed to be said’
Susan Sarandon is looking back on her final conversations with her former lover David Bowie.
The Oscar-winning actress, 75, said that she was able to reconnect with the iconic singer before he passed away from liver cancer in 2016 at age 69. During that period, they were able to find closure.
"I was fortunate enough to be closer to him right before he died, the last couple of months. He did find me again," Sarandon told The Mail on Sunday’s You magazine. "We talked to each other and said some things that needed to be said."
Sarandon and Bowie first connected while starring together in the 1983 vampire film The Hunger, and dated secretly for a while after. After splitting, Sarandon went on to meet Tim Robbins while working together on the 1988 baseball film Bull Durham; the actors had two sons before splitting in 2009. Bowie, meanwhile, wed supermodel Iman in 1992.
"I love his wife Iman, someone who was so equal in stature to him," Sarandon said of the woman who married her ex. "That was clearly who he was destined to be with. And I’ve kept in touch with her."
Sarandon was able to see Bowie in person one last time in December 2015. Now, she says she considers herself "so fortunate to be able to see him when he told me what was going on with him." Unfortunately, Sarandon said her final phone conversation with Bowie is a bit of a blur. It occurred while she was visiting the Greek island of Lesbos to highlight the refugee crisis. Sarandon had taken Ambien, a sleep medication that made her brain fuzzy.
"I wasn’t sleeping so I took a pretty strong sleep aid. And I had this dream that David had called me and that we’d had this conversation," she shared. "Then later I thought, Did he actually call me? And I went to my phone and he had. But I have no recollection of what that conversation was."
Sadly, Bowie went on to pass away soon after.
"He died a week later. It’s all so frustrating," she explained, adding that "There was a double rainbow in New York on the day that David Bowie passed."
As for finding a romantic partner in the future, Sarandon, who split from filmmaker Jonathan Bricklin in 2015, hasn't counted that entirely out. Back then, she said her sexuality was "up for grabs," and she still maintains the same stance.
"Yeah. I’m open to persuasion. But busy as hell and with lots of wonderful friends and grandchildren," she said. "Everybody is somewhere on a spectrum, and I like the fluidity we have now. For me, it’s all about connection, curiosity, passion."
Still, she's "not really looking. I feel fulfilled and happy. If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. In the meantime, I am dancing in my kitchen."
Her comments echo those she made this summer, when she shared that she's open to new possibilities.
"In terms of a romantic relationship, I don't know," she told People back in August "That window may have closed, but I'm forever hopeful — but not desperate."
