Joanna Cassidy, 80, an Emmy-winning actress, first met Alan Hamel, 89, in 1978, when she was a guest on \u201cThe Alan Hamel Show,\u201d his Canadian talk show, which was on the air from 1976 to 1980. At the time, Hamel, who later became a television producer, was married to the actress Suzanne Somers. When Somers died in 2023, he had to decide whether to follow the advice she had given him.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said, \u2018I don\u2019t want you moping around,\u2019\u201d he recalled. Finding love again would be important, Somers told him. It happened in November 2024, when Hamel\u2019s son, Stephen Hamel, a movie producer, saw Cassidy at a screening in Hollywood and told her he thought she and his father should meet.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hadn\u2019t dated in years,\u201d said Cassidy, who is divorced. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a goal in my life.\u201d But weeks later, they were a couple. Both have thoughts on why finding romance at their age can be so gratifying.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the most important things that happens when people get together later in life is they speak the truth, even if it hurts,\u201d Cassidy said. For example, she sometimes needs days of alone time, which she spends at her home in Hollywood, away from Hamel\u2019s place in Palm Springs, Calif.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlan is a very positive man,\u201d Cassidy said. \u201cHe\u2019s got a healthy attitude toward life.\u201d Part of how he demonstrates it is through supporting what she said was her No. 1 priority, her career.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we started dating, I told Joanna, I don\u2019t want you to compromise anything you do for me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joanna Cassidy, 80, an Emmy-winning actress, first met Alan Hamel, 89, in 1978, when she was a guest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[209768,430,109898,156,13207,209769,6724,111,139,209771,69,209773,209772,209770,94926,14720],"class_list":["post-407671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-actors-and-actresses","tag-celebrities","tag-dating-and-relationships","tag-entertainment","tag-lake","tag-marriages","tag-nash","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-niecy","tag-nz","tag-paulina","tag-porizkova","tag-ricki","tag-somers","tag-suzanne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}