Dannii Minogue gave a rare interview about marriage to Julian McMahon weeks before his death
The actress and singer, 53, rarely speaks publicly about her time with the Aussie actor, but just five weeks before he lost his battle to cancer, she gave a candid interview about their union back in the 90s.
Speaking to How To Fail podcast with Elizabeth Day on May 28, Minogue discussed the factors that contributed to their divorce in 1995 after just one year of marriage.
'Now I don't think [the marriage] was a failure, but at the time that it ended, my world was very dark and bleak,' Minogue, who was just 23 at the time, reflected on the podcast episode.
'Love sweeps you off your feet and it is an incredible feeling, and I really got swept away and did not see what it actually was.'
Minogue says her parents have had a long, happy marriage and that's what she wanted as well, but it wasn't meant to be.
'He was hunky and charming and always a big energy walking into a room and made me feel fantastic, until it didn't,' she said of her ex-husband, who she met on the set of Home And Away in 1991.
When the host pointed out that McMahon came from an 'incredibly well connected' political family in Australia – his dad was former Prime Minister William McMahon and his mum way socialite and philanthropist Lady Sonia McMahon – Minogue said that this reality didn't help matters in their marriage.
'His father was a prime minister, but I knew him as an actor on Home and Away,' she said. 'I didn't meet him in that world. I wasn't exposed to that world – I'm still not. It's not my place. I had no intention of hanging out in that world.'
'His mother was very weary of me. She thought that I was wanting to be part of that world [and] that I was going to take, take, take from them.
'It was the furthest thing from the truth and not what I wanted at all. So she made it very clear that I was not to be around and she didn't want me a part of anything. Yet Julian wanted me to be his wife.'
Another contributing factor to their split were their careers, she said.
'Julian wanted to go to America and work,' she shared. 'My work was in London and so I helped him set up in New York – he got on a soap opera [ Another World ] there and I committed to travelling back and forth because we were married.'
But she said that each time she made the trip across the pond, there was 'just something not right'.
'Things I saw in the apartment, there were people around that I didn't know, and he was just very, very distant to the point that he called it off,' she said.
Both went on to have successful careers in their chosen fields. Minogue released five studio albums and starred in numerous TV projects, including being a judge o n Australia's Got Talent, The X Factor Australia and The Masked Singer Australia.
As for McMahon, he scored recurring roles on the hit series Profiler, Charmed, and, his most famous role yet, Nip/Tuck, which ran for six seasons in the US.
While Minogue never remarried, McMahon was married to former Baywatch star Brooke Burns from 1999 to 2001, before marrying author Kelly Paniagua in 2014.
He has one child from his relationship with Brooke, a 25-year-old daughter named Madison, and Minogue has a 15-year-old son, Ethan, with her ex-partner, British model Kris Smith.
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