How a foreign policy goliath dated a string of beauties including Bond girl Jill St John, Liv Ullman Shirley MacLaine and Diane Sawyer and hit it off with Zsa Zsa Gabor

‘Strength is the ultimate aphrodisiac.’ That was diplomatic powerhouse Henry Kissinger’s explanation of how he managed to date some of the most beautiful women in the world.

Despite the fact that Kissinger, who died on Wednesday at the age of 100, acquired a reputation as a ladies’ man in the staid Nixon administration.

His biographer, Walter Isaacson, wrote that Hollywood executives were eager to give him a star turn, which Kissinger took to premieres and flashy restaurants.

His companions included Jill St. John, Shirley MacLaine, Marlo Thomas, Candice Bergen and Liv Ullmann.

Additionally, he also hit it off with B-movie star Zsa Zsa Gabor, who revealed their feud during a 1987 interview with David Letterman when she revealed that the pair had been set up by Nixon himself. “He ruined one kiss,” she joked.

Kissinger ditched his playboy lifestyle when he married Nancy Maginnes in 1974, at a White House event in 2015

In a 1972 Playboy Club Bunnies poll, the man Newsweek dubbed “Super-K” ranked first as “the man I’d most like to go on a date with.”

Kissinger divorced his first wife, Ann Fleischer, in 1964 and then married Nancy Maginnes, an aide to New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, in 1974. He had two children from his first marriage.

Vanity fair reported in 2007 that Gabor proudly showed off a photo of herself with Kissinger in her home.

Gabor, who died in 2016 at the age of 99, accompanied Kissinger to a state dinner held for then-South Korean President Chung Hee Pak in San Francisco in 1969.

When asked if they talked about world affairs, Gabor said Time magazine: ‘No. But we talked about other things.’

Their relationship was revisited in Gabor’s 1991 memoir, One Lifetime Is Not Enough. The actress explained that Kissinger drove her home from dinner one night in Beverly Hills and accepted her invitation to have drinks.

However, when he went to guess her, his pager went off and he was called back to be at Nixon’s side.

Kissinger was so eager to get to Nixon’s house in San Clemente, California, that he dented Gabor’s gate with his car. According to A., the car belonged to the president Washington Post feature from 1992.

Kissinger and Diane Sawyer together at an event in New York City in 1994, despite their romance ending years earlier, they were known to be confidantes

Kissinger is also said to have dated romantic film star Shirley MacLaine in the 1970s, pictured here together.

a Post function published shortly after his death, it detailed that Kissinger was known as the “swinging bachelor” in the Nixon administration before marrying Maginnes in 1974.

The couple never got a second date because, as the Post reported in 1992, Kissinger had to cancel his invitation to meet in Boston for diplomatic reasons.

‘I can’t fly down because we’re invading Cambodia tomorrow. It’s a big secret, you’re the first person outside the White House to know about it,” he apparently told her.

During his time in the Nixon administration, Kissinger was also linked to actress Jill St. John. According to The New York Times, they were often seen together at fancy Manhattan restaurants, where he would “run his fingers through her hair.”

St. John’s friend, Tom Mankiewcz, was quoted in the 2006 book Supermob, the story of Hollywood “fixer” Sidney Korshak, as saying that the relationship between St. John and Kissinger was extremely close but also platonic.

Kissinger hugged by his former partner, Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann

While a friend is quoted in the book as saying that St. John stopped having sex with Kissinger because of the carpet bombings in Southeast Asia.

However, St. John once told it Women’s clothing everyday: ‘There never was a Roman. It was a great friendship and it still is. It hasn’t been a great romance and never will be.’

Another of Kissinger’s conquests was famed broadcaster and former White House aide Diane Sawyer. They were an item while they both worked for Nixon.

“The power of Henry working in a room is still seismic. Suddenly everyone wants to take it a step further and say something they find interesting or funny,” Sawyer said New York Magazine in 2006.

Despite the gossip and the tabloids, Reuters notes in Kissinger’s obituary: “Those who knew him, however, said the playboy image was largely a creation of the media.”

Norwegian actress Liv Ullman also had a relationship with Kissinger in the 1970s. In an interview with The Guardian, Ullman said she only dated him because he did most of the talking and made her feel less self-conscious.

‘I absolutely disapprove of what he has done politically, and I told him so, but he tells good stories. “He just liked being with me because I don’t understand anything, because I’m stupid in politics and I’m on the wrong side,” she said.