Bollywood actor who played James Bond villain had an open marriage with first wife, ended in divorce: ‘My wife's relationships with other men bothered me'

Indian Express

9 hours ago

Bollywood stars are seldom open up about the messy details of their romantic relationships. Be it the chatter about the affairs, or open relationships, stars often keep mum about everything that could result in a controversy so when actor Kabir Bedi and his first wife, dancer Protima Bedi, decided to try open marriage, it shocked those around them. Even now, when Kabir is 79, and has been married four times, the idea continues to shock people. In a recent interview, the actor, who appeared in many international projects like Octopussy and Sandokan, shared that his marriage with Protima in the early 1970s was not as smooth as he had hoped, and so, they decided to try something new.
Kabir and Protima got married in 1969 and had two children but, towards the end, they realised that the only way to save their mariage was to convert it into an open marriage. 'Protima and I got married, had kids… It was a 7-year-long relationship. Towards the end, when we started having problems, the problems of extramarital relationships were such that if we wanted to continue with our marriage, open marriage was the only way to stay together but that experiment also failed. Ultimately, we had to leave,' he shared with Siddharth Kannan on his YouTube channel.
When asked if her relationships with other men bothered him, Kabir shared, 'It bothered me. I had hoped that it wouldn't bother me but it did.' Kabir shared that such relationships come with consequences but 'we couldn't handle those consequences.' He further shared, 'It takes some very special kind of people to survive an open marriage and we were not them. We thought we would. We thought this is the age of free love and openness etc. It was 1960s-70s, the era of flower power, hippies, demonstrations of peace, new types of music, social change, social experimentation, we thought that we will fond our salvation. We thought we can't do a normal marriage, let's try an open marriage, but the experiment failed.' Kabir and Protima divorced in 1974.
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In an earlier chat with Filmfare, Kabir shared that they tried the traditional form of monogamous marriage for a long time before they experimented with their relationship. 'We did try the traditional model for a long time. But at times, what happens is somebody has an affair, then someone else has an affair, and then the problem of outside relationships comes into the marriage. Egos take over, you become possessive, and what not. And the fact that it does upset you, despite you being an advocate of free love… The fact is, it's very hard for an open marriage to succeed,' he said.
It was towards the end of his marriage that Kabir got involved with actor Parveen Babi, but that relationship ended shortly afterwards. He then married Susan Humphreys in 1980, and they were married for almost a decade. He later married Nikki Bedi in 1992, and separated in 2005. He has been married to Parveen Dusanj since 2016, although they have been together for 19 years.