Bette Midler’s ‘outrageous’ husband Martin von Haselberg – and his many faces: from an anarchic performance artist, to a commodities trader, to a devoted husband and father
- Married by an Elvis impersonator in Vegas just 6 weeks after her first date with her now-husband, the Hocus Pocus star says their 40 years together have been a ‘fabulous ride’
- The Buenos Aires native was one half of the performance art duo Kipper Kids, has been trading commodities ‘since before I went to drama school’, and is daughter Sophie von Haselberg’s ‘cool dad’
Want to know the secret to making a marriage last? According to legendary American actress and singer Bette Midler, it is to not sleep together, and the Hocus Pocus star means it literally.
Last month while promoting her latest film, The Fabulous Four, in which she stars alongside her daughter, Sophie von Haselberg, Midler revealed to Entertainment Tonight that she and her husband, Martin von Haselberg, sleep in separate bedrooms because of his snoring. Nevertheless, the 78-year-old added that their marriage has been “a fabulous ride” as they near their 40th wedding anniversary.
Earlier in July, Midler told Today’s Hoda Kotb that, like her character Marilyn in The Fabulous Four, she had a whirlwind romance with her now-husband. She was the one who proposed, and they got married after just six weeks of getting to know each other.
Their wedding was officiated by an Elvis impersonator at the Starlight Chapel in Las Vegas. The newlyweds then lived in separate houses for two months because, as Midler says, “I hardly knew him!” The Grammy-winner now calls her marriage “astonishing … just like my career”.
So, who is 75-year-old Martin von Haselberg, the man who stole the Divine Miss M’s heart?
Where is Martin von Haselberg from?
Martin von Haselberg was born in 1949 in the capital of Argentina, Buenos Aires, as the youngest of four boys. Per an interview in the LA Times, he grew up in Germany and England. Sent to boarding school at 12, he admits to having been a “terrible student”. Von Haselberg changed schools multiple times because, he says, his teachers found him rebellious. He also studied Greek and Latin when he was young, and attended drama school in London.
His varied career
Martin von Haselberg started out in the 1970s as one half of the performance art duo Kipper Kids with Brian Routh, who died in 2018. The LA Times described their work as “performance art involving foodstuffs, firecrackers and a lot of whiskey”.
The anarchic duo performed at the Munich Olympics in 1972 and were also associated with the early years of the punk movement. They were popular in Europe and the US, but about this popularity, von Haselberg told Elsewhere magazine, “I don’t know why people come to our shows. I do think that audiences enjoy being violated, and I don’t know what that is. Perhaps they are crazy.”