Glenn Close was "too clueless" to realise she went on a date with Robert Redford

Speaking on Lemonada Media's Wiser Than Me podcast, she said: "After we did The Natural, Robert Redford invited me to a very romantic restaurant where we had dinner together.

"And I was too clueless and unknowing and unsure to even consider that I might have dated him.

"But he found Billy [Sibylle Szaggars, his widow]. But, yeah... It's just because I didn't know. I didn't get it."

Glenn married Cabot Wade in 1969 when she was 22 but they split two years later and she went on to wed James Marlas in 1984 before their relationship broke down in 1987. In 2006, she embarked on her longest marriage, to David Shaw, but she and the entrepreneur went their separate ways in 2015.

And the 78-year-old actress admitted she regrets all three of her marriages, and blamed her upbringing inside the Moral Re-Armament Movement, which she felt impacted on her emotional development and conditioned her to keep her feelings suppressed.

She said: "I've been married three times and I shouldn't have married any of them.

"But I had an empty tool box, so I've had to try to fill that tool box - as far as human relations and certainly relationships in a marriage - with nothing as a model.

"So I've made a lot of mistakes. It was sad that I was so unknowing. I always chose the wrong man."

But the Fatal Attraction star is thankful her daughter Annie - who she has with film producer John Starke - hasn't followed in her footsteps with her own personal life.

She said: "In my generation, in my family, we have a lot of divorces. My kids, I think - knock on wood - have found literally life partners.

"And I think that maybe what we went through, they've seen it and they know they can do something else. So that makes me happy."

Glenn's own experiences haven't put her off the idea of lasting love.

She said: "I do think that one of the greatest possible gifts in life is to have a life partner. It's tricky, of course."