What Famous Men in the '90s Thought About Sex

“I’ve had success with girls. I admit that I’m a romantic—sometime this worries me, because I’m not sure if the rest of the world is on the same wavelength. And I’m quick to recognize love when I see it. For example, four days after I met my future wife [actress Ana Leza], I knew we’d get married. I was so much in the habit of going through relationships quickly, though, that people gave our marriage a year at most. We’ve now been married five years. Am I faithful? My English is still not so good. What does that word mean?”

“I really, really like women. I was twelve years old when I first got laid by the seventeen-year-old babysitter. Once I started, I kept going. For a while, I was definitely into older women: Back then, nice girls my age just didn’t have sex, but older nice girls did. And that’s what I was interested in. I’ve been married four times [twice, and presently to Melanie Griffith]. Once I said I was incapable of fidelity. I’ve since found out that I was wrong. There’s a quote from Socrates that stuck in my mind: ‘If you get a good wife, you live happily ever after. If you get a bad one, you become a philosopher.’ Thanks to Melanie, I know I will never become a philosopher.”

“In the old days, bodybuilders talked about eating two pounds of meat and eggs a day, and how they couldn’t have sex. I thought, who would want to be part of that kind of sport? But I became a bodybuilding anyway—and discovered these guys were all wrong. Especially about sex. Having chicks around broke up the intense training; it gave you relief, then afterward you’d go back to the serious stuff.”

“Justified or not, I seem to have acquired a reputation as a ladies’ man. The truth is, I’ve always loved women—every shape, color, age—and I always gravitate toward their company.”

“Women are the obsession of my life. Absolutely. I just want to do everything to them. I want to love them and embrace them and die in them and live in them and all that stuff.”

“I’ve never been without a woman. Not since I was sixteen. Love, as a feeling, is the greatest thing in the world. And when you become famous, there’s no denying it, and you get lots of attention from women. Here’s my approach on that level: What if you go to bed with a different chick night after night? Does that do anything for you? It really doesn’t—you wake up lonely anyway. You don’t know who’s in the bed with you, and you have to say, ‘Gee, I gotta go now. Okay, see you later.’ And then you go out with another one. But you can carry the gun belt for just so long. You finally realize there’s got to be some kind of substance, somebody you can lie down with, spend some time with, cross it back and forth with. And discover a little bit with. That’s when sex is at its best.”

“I want to be in love all the time. What else is there? Love is the most ambiguous, delirious, illogical emotion there is. I’ve always had a rapport with women—I truly enjoy them. What is life, seriously, without the female species? Women are incredible: When they love, their passion is titanic in is proportions. Once sitting around with a bunch of guys, I said, ‘Just think about it: If all the women were somehow removed from the earth, I think I would be leaving one second later.’ I want to be romantic forever, to be cryonically frozen with a box of chocolates under my arm, and some flowers, and then thawed out in two hundred years so I can propose to someone.”

“Sexy women, women of mystery—I’m always on the lookout for them. So many people give sex a bad reputation. I’ll never understand that. Sex is the most natural, really cool thing in the world. It’s not secret—I like it. And I like having it as often as possible with someone who likes it too.”

“At nineteen, I went to New York. Coming from a little hick town, it was all just astounding. I rode everything with hair—it was wild. Later there were deeper relationships; I grew up and I learned that love is a power of its own. It’s like a spell. You don’t have any choice in the matter either. You can set up to fall in love with somebody, but that’s no guarantee. You can set up not to fall in love with somebody, and that’s till no guarantee. With time and experience, I discovered that the love of one good woman is everything. I met Jessica [Lange] and we fell in love pretty quickly. I’m suddenly being connected with someone in a way I never knew was possible. It’s like a revelation, like discovering a whole new life that you didn’t know was in you.”

“I’m a little embarrassed about it now, but once I did tell a reporter that a girlfriend called me Thumper because Thumper had big feet. And you know what they say about men with big feet. Don’t ask me if it’s true. What is true is that I love women. I love them all. And yeah, I love sex. But what I love best is being in a one-on-one relationship with somebody.”