The Skye’s The Limit – How Ben Lee Wooed A Hollywood Star

Ione Skye didn’t view Ben Lee as a potential lover when she bumped into him at a Hollywood party.

It was 2006 and the premiere of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, starring Kirsten Dunst and Australia’s Judy Davis and Rose Byrne. Skye – a single mum to four-year-old Kate – attended the after-party hoping to hook up with another of the movie’s stars, Jason Schwartzman.

“I had come to the party hoping Jason might see me all glammed up and fall for me,” Skye admits in her new memoir Say Everything.

He wasn’t interested.

Downhearted, she bumped into Ben Lee at the party. Ben was a friend of her ex-husband, Adam Horovitz, from the Beastie Boys. “I’d always thought of him as the Australian Wonder Boy, emphasis on ‘boy’,” Skye says.

“At 14, he’d started a three-piece band called Noise Addict. The group was quickly signed to Thurston Moore’s record label, then to the Beastie Boys’ Grand Royal.”

“The Aussie Wonder Boy was 28 now, fit and lean and very cute, with curly russet hair and piercing blue eyes. He was about my height. Definitely a short king … and he had a commanding, charismatic, almost mesmerising presence.”

The following day, Skye was lamenting her unsuccessful play for Schwartzman. “But what about Ben?” her friend Thomas asked.

“Hmm,” she replied. “He’s just a friend.”

“I had never thought of Ben as more than that,” Skye added. “He was eight years younger than me, and I still pictured him in my head as 18. And he didn’t seem to have a bad-boy bone in his body, so I’d be going against type.”

Before marrying a Beastie Boy, Skye had lived with Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

A few days after the movie premiere, Ben suggested a date. He took Skye to the John Lennon documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon (“Just a suggestion,” Skye writes, “don’t see a movie about an intense, enmeshed marriage on a first date”).

Ben pashed her in the parking lot (“the Aussie term for ‘passionate kissing’,” she explains in the book). A couple of dates later, after a “minimalist macrobiotic meal”, Ben takes her to his bedroom. Skye declared it the best sex she’d had since a lesbian relationship. “Sensual, connected, lusty and playful. It was obvious he respected me and my body.”

Ben later admits that on the way to the date, he felt unsure and intimidated. He stopped at the Sunset Marquis, where he received a much-needed pep talk from Maroon 5’s Adam Levine.

When Skye got home, she immediately texted Ben: “How about some morning sex?”

He didn’t reply.

“How about this afternoon?”

Nothing.

“How about later?”

Still nothing. 

When Skye returned Ben’s guitar, she asked, “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “It’s just that you seem to be coming on a bit strong … texting me five times after is too much. Whatever you’re feeling, I am not.”

Skye was hurt. A friend advised her not to contact Ben for two weeks. “Not a day less.”

After about a week, Ben called. “I’ve been thinking about you.” He appeared at her door, bearing kumquats. “I like you a lot,” he said. “I just like taking things slow, to see if it’s real and we’re not just chasing a high or something.”

Skye thought of the scene in her hit movie Say Anything, where Lloyd says to Diane: “Are you here because you need someone or because you need me?”

She tells Ben: “I’m up for taking it slow.”

They have now been married for 16 years. Their daughter, Goldie, is 15. 

“Is it a coincidence that the three major relationships in my life have been with musicians?” Skye ponders in her memoir. “Maybe not. I grew up wishing my father’s songs had expressed love for me.”

Skye did not meet her dad, Scottish pop star Donovan (Sunshine Superman, Mellow Yellow, Hurdy Gurdy Man), until one week before her 18th birthday.

“Now my partner sings achingly beautiful, romantic songs about me, and silly, sweet ones for our daughters.

“His love, devotion and camaraderie make the world feel limitless, yet safe, for all of us. And nothing has helped me make peace with my fatherless past more than seeing Ben father my daughters.”

Skye had previously been celebrated in the Beastie Boys song Get It Together.

Ad-Rock down with the Ione …

Because she’s the cheese and I’m the macaroni

Skye later changed her tattoo from ADAM to MADAME.

In her memoir, Ione Skye calls Ben Lee “the love of my life. I still get excited every time you walk into the room.”

Say Everything (Harper Collins) is out on April 2.