William Shatner’s faith in marriage

William Shatner has always been a ladies’ man, said Mickey Rapkin in Elle. At 12, he lost his virginity to a woman who helped the family’s cook. “She stopped cooking breakfast and cooked me for a while,” he says. His early encounters weren’t entirely successful. “It’s a lot of flopping around until you know where things are supposed to be.” Shatner got the chance to perfect his technique after winning the role of Captain James T. Kirk in the Star Trek TV series.

But he soon tired of bedding women who wanted to be with the captain of the Enterprise, not William Shatner. “The longer I go about living, I see it’s the relationship that is most meaningful,” he says. “Sex without the relationship is cold and unappetizing. It’s a Chinese meal the day after. You gotta throw it out.”

After two divorces, he found love again in 1997 when he married former model Nerine Kidd. But two years later, his “beautiful soul mate”—who had long battled with alcoholism—drowned in their family pool. Despite this tragedy, Shatner’s faith in marriage hadn’t been shaken, and in 2001 he wed his fourth wife, Elizabeth Martin. “I love being married,” he says. “It’s being in soul with another human being. It’s like that Watson-Crick DNA, the circular staircase of entwinement.”

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