Actress Lisa Dillon accuses Sir Patrick Stewart of incorrectly portraying their five year relationship as a 'silly affair' in his memoir 'Making It So'

Actress Lisa Dillon has accused Sir Patrick Stewart of incorrectly portraying their five year relationship as a 'silly affair' in his memoir. 

Dillon, now 44, was in a relationship with the actor between 2003 and 2007, starting when she was 23 and he was 62. 

The duo first met after being cast in Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's The Master Builder, when Stewart - famous for his role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation - was still married to his second wife, producer Wendy Neuss. 

His first marriage to Sheila Falconer, who had two children with the star, had already ended following an affair with actress Jennifer Hetrick, making his relationship with Dillon his second to end a marriage. 

Dillon said she was in her local Waterstones last autumn when she saw some copies of Stewart's memoir, Making It So, before picking one up and searching for her name in the index. 

Patrick Stewart (as Halvard Solness) and Lisa Dillon (as Hilda Wangel) in the production 'The Master Builder' at The Albery Theatre London

Dillon was in a relationship with the actor between 2003 and 2007, starting when she was 23 and he was 62. The pair are pictured in 2006 

Dillon and Stewart started their relationship while he was still married to his second wife, producer Wendy Neuss 

In the memoir, which will be released in paperback this June, Stewart writes: 'And so, another divorce. I felt stupid and responsible … I had cheated on my wife with a younger woman - again … And just like my affair with Jenny Hetrick, my time with Lisa Dillon would also prove to be relatively short … In a life chockablock with joy and success, my two failed marriages are my greatest regret.'

Dillon told The Times: 'The impression he gives is that our relationship was very fleeting - that I was a silly affair that broke up a marriage - and he got caught out.

'But it's not just about our nearly five years together - this is the most enduring friendship of my life. Or it was.' 

Dillon said the pair remained close friends after their relationship ended, with Dillon even introducing Stewart, now 83, to her baby daughter six years ago. 

In the memoir, Stewart blames the pair's onstage relationship for creating fake feelings, The Times reported. 

'Life imitated art,' the memoir reads. 'I remember the warning I had received from an older actor decades ago, that if you keep saying ''I love you'' to someone in a play, you can drift into believing the sentiment to be true.' 

Dillon said: 'I never imagined he would say that he wasn't really in love with me, that it was an occupational hazard of being an actor.' 

Dillon said she did not expect the pair's relationship to be a main part of Stewart's memoir out of respect for his current wife, singer Sunny Ozell, and added she would rather have not been mentioned at all. 

Dillion said the pair had remained close friends after their relationship ended

Patrick Stewart and his current wife Sunny Ozell attending the 2024 Vanity Fair Oscar this month

The pair's relationship was kept secret while the play was performed, with Dillon making her West End debut on her 24th birthday. 'We were already in love by then,' Dillon said. 

'Afterwards [...] things moved quite quickly. It wasn't that we got caught out.

'It was a decision for him to go to America and end the marriage so that we could start a life together.' 

Dillon said she now looks back on the relationship and that period of her life differently after reading the memoir. 

'I see my vulnerability in a way that I never have before. For the first time, I've thought, ''What did a 62-year-old man find attractive about me at 23?''', she said. 

Dillon said the relationship broke down when the pair were set to perform Macbeth together, until Dillon dropped out. She described Stewart as a 'workaholic' and added that she became 'extraordinarily lonely' - but their split was 'not a clean break'.