best-selling new memoir<\/a>, restaurateur Keith McNally reveals that he had a steamy romance with an extremely famous Hollywood actress.<\/p>\nBut he refers to her only as \u201cX\u201d and gives just a handful of clues about his high-profile paramour\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n
As far as Page Six can tell, the star in question is \u201cX Files\u201d actress Gillian Anderson.<\/p>\n
McNally is the founder of Morandi, Balthazar, Minetta Tavern and other famed Manhattan eateries. Courtesy of Keith McNally<\/p>\n
McNally was on a break from future wife Alina Johnson during his romance with Anderson. Courtesy of Keith McNally<\/p>\n
The Balthazar owner writes in well-received tome \u201cI Regret Almost Everything\u201d that the actress got in touch with him through a mutual friend after she saw a story about him in Vanity Fair in 1998.<\/p>\n
He says that he didn\u2019t know who she was despite \u201cher starring in a TV show watched by millions.\u201d<\/p>\n
McNally writes that they got to know each other over the phone, and after a few calls, the LA-based star said she\u2019d come and visit him in New York. (She surprised him by deciding to stay in his fourth-floor Soho walk-up, rather than a hotel).<\/p>\n
In the book he said \u201cX\u201d was on a show \u201cwatched by millions.\u201d Getty Images<\/p>\n
He went onto have daughter Alice with Alina. Courtesy of Keith McNally<\/p>\n
He also says that they went to see a Broadway play called \u201cArt,\u201d which dates her visit between 12 February 1998 and 8 August 1999. And he says that a picture of them together appeared in the New York Post.<\/p>\n
The Post doesn\u2019t appear to have published a photograph of McNally and an actress during the run of that play. But the legendary Rush & Molloy column in the Daily News did. (Perhaps McNally is misremembering which paper published the pic, or perhaps he intentionally transposed the papers in the book to help disguise the identity of \u201cX.\u201d)<\/p>\n
\u2018\u201dX-Files\u201d star Gillian Anderson had a cozy dinner with British restaurateur\u00a0Keith McNally\u00a0on Saturday,\u201d George Rush and Joanna Molloy reported, \u201cWhere\u2019d they eat? Where else but McNally\u2019s still-white-hot celebreteria Balthazar. McNally, who delivered the sexy redhead to her hotel after dinner, vouches that, \u2018She\u2019s only a friend. Really, we would have gone out the back way if anything was happening.’\u201d<\/p>\n
He claims \u201cX\u201d screamed \u201cf**k off!\u201d down the phone when he ended it. Getty Images<\/p>\n
They had the affair in 1998. Courtesy of Keith McNally<\/p>\n
Why downplay the romance? The answer may lie in McNally\u2019s at-the-time off-and-on relationship with Alina Johnson, who he went on to marry in 2002.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe morning [\u201cX\u201d] left New York, I scrubbed my apartment and called Alina,\u201d he writes, \u201cShe was in a foul mood. She\u2019d just seen a photo of my with X in the New York Post.\u201d<\/p>\n
(In some ways, the cloak-and-dagger act in the book is slightly odd, since McNally has already publicly revealed that he had a relationship with Anderson. \u201cMy girlfriend at the time asked me to ban Gillian\u00a0Anderson, who had been a brief girlfriend of mine, [from my restaurants]\u201d McNally told the Wall Street Journal in 2019, \u201cOf course, I said no.\u201d]<\/p>\n
The book is out now on Gallery. @keithmcnallynyc\/Instagram<\/p>\n
McNally, who also founded the Odeon, Morandi, Minetta Tavern and Schiller\u2019s, among other famed Manhattan eateries, writes in the book that the first night that \u201cX\u201d arrived in New York, they didn\u2019t have sex because she was tired.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought spending the night together and not having sex meant the end of the relationship,\u201d he writes, \u201cNo one told me that nothing turns women on more than not having sex.\u201d<\/p>\n
He writes that the next even he took her to dinner at Balthazar and went back to his apartment. <\/p>\n
Balthazar remains a hot spot. Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cFew things impress a date more than taking her to a restaurant you happen to own,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithin ten minutes [of getting home] I was lying next to X\u2019s naked body.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he says that the fling made him miss Johnson all the more, and \u2014 while they reunited a couple more times \u2014 he ended things with \u201cX\u201d to rebuild his relationship with his soon-to-be second wife.<\/p>\n
\u201cA day after she left New York I called [\u201cX\u201d] and told her point-blank that though I liked her a lot, I wanted our relationship to be simply platonic. Without missing a beat,\u201d he writes, \u201cshe screamed \u2018F**k off!\u2019 and hung up the phone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reps for McNally and Anderson didn\u2019t get back to us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In his new memoir, Keith McNally says he had an romance with a Hollywood actress, but doesn\u2019t name…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[353,49,48,361,42034,75,42035,42036,24304,4146,7460],"class_list":["post-65964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-books","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-classic-television","tag-entertainment","tag-gillian-anderson","tag-keith-mcnally","tag-new-york-city-society","tag-sex-and-relationships","tag-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}