Robert Wagner wanted to kill Warren Beatty

Warren Beatty (pictured), the Hollywood film star and notorious Lothario, came close to being assassinated by fellow actor Robert Wagner after he began an affair with his wife Natalie Wood in 1961. The revelation comes in Wagner's autobiography, Pieces of My Heart, and recalls the time when Beatty was having a not-too-secret relationship with Wood after meeting her on the set of the film, Splendor in the Grass. Wagner, star of the long-running TV series Hart to Hart, says that their tryst drove him close to suicide and he tells of how he would wait outside Beatty's home with a loaded gun contemplating murder.

"[Beatty] was pretty smooth, very attractive. He was the man," says Wagner of his love rival, before musing on his homicidal tendencies. "I don't think I could have ever gone through with that act, but I was pretty frustrated and upset."

In the book, Wagner, now 78, also reveals how, as a 22-year-old, he had a secret, four-year affair with the Hollywood legend, Barbara Stanwyck, who at the time was more than twice his age. Of Stanwyck, he says: "The greatest thing that she gave me was a sense of self-esteem. That she thought the way she did about me and took the time with me meant everything in the world."

Wagner also reveals how he was left "absolutely paralysed" in November 1981 when Natalie Wood's body was found floating off southern California's Catalina Island. The accidental drowning followed a furious row with Christopher Walken, who had been dining with the couple on their yacht. As reported recently on The First Post, Wagner admits in the book that he was jealous of Walken: he felt his wife was being "emotionally unfaithful" to him on the set of Brainstorm, the film she was shooting with Walken at the time.

Wagner believes that Wood, who had drunk a lot in the course of the evening, lost her footing and fell overboard.