“I'm happy being a crazy cat lady”: Why Patsy Kensit has given up dating

There’s nothing wrong with being a single cat lady and Good Housekeeping’s April cover star, Patsy Kensit, is here to prove it. In an exclusive interview, the actress and singer revealed that after a challenging few years, she’s given up dating and is now resolutely single.

“My friends rallied round me during the past few years - they saved me,” she says. “I love hanging out with them. I’m certainly not interested in dating! I’m happy being a crazy cat lady.”

Patsy has experienced her fair share of heartbreak over the years, having been married four times and engaged a fourth, and credits her friends for helping her through it. As for the cat in question, he’s known as Bowie, a nod to Patsy’s history with the legendary singer.

Patsy grew up in west London, in a council-estate house and, as a child, she’d sit for hours playing David Bowie’s Hunky Dory on her parents’ record player. When she was 16, she heard about a new film - an adaptation of the Colin MacInnes novel Absolute Beginners - in which Bowie already had a lead role.

By this point, she was somewhat of an established actress, having played Mia Farrow’s daughter in The Great Gatsby, and two years later starred with Elizabeth Taylor and Jane Fonda in The Blue Bird. For Absolute Beginners, Patsy explained that they wanted “a Brigitte Bardot-esque, sexual, feline [actor] to play the Crepe Suzette character,” revealing that she “campaigned for the part,” finding out where the casting director’s office was and, twice a week, dropping her pictures off there.

“I was in a band at the time [Eighth Wonder, who had a hit in 1988 with I’m Not Scared] and I’d been in magazines such as The Face. It took some time, but after producers came to see the band - which was immaculately conceived but hopelessly flawed - they offered me the part,” she says.

So was Bowie everything she’d imagined? “He shook everyone’s hand on the first day and my 16-year-old brain thought he was going to fall in love with me, but he just walked off!

“I was crushed. One day, I was sitting in the makeup room alone and he came in and started brushing my hair. He didn’t say a thing. It was the most erotic thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Discussing what she wishes she’d known when she was younger, Patsy described herself as “a terrible worrier”, lamenting the fact she wasted so much time doing exactly that.

“I wish I’d been able to enjoy each day and stop worrying,” she says. “I was a terrible worrier, but I’m very dedicated to meditation now and things are really good. I’ve had a horrible few years, but things are better now.”

Read the full interview in Good Housekeeping’s April issue on sale from Thursday 27^th February.