Dad's last words to me were 'forgive me': Larry Hagman's daughter on growing up around his drinking, drug-taking and womanising 

As J. R. Ewing, the dastardly oil baron in Dallas, Larry Hagman bestrode the Eighties as the world’s most famous TV actor, earning £70,000 an episode — equivalent to more than £200,000 today.

But if ruthless charmer J. R. was larger than life, Hagman had a persona even more colourful than his Dallas alter ego.

He regaled everyone with tales of his drinking — bourbon over his cornflakes and champagne all day, until a liver transplant in 1995 curtailed his alcoholic adventures — and readily admitted smoking marijuana and taking LSD.

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It has been often repeated that underscoring Larry Hagman's fame was his devotion to family life with his children, Kristina and Preston, and his wife of almost 60 years, Maj

He played up his eccentricities, such as the times when he would visit the supermarket wearing a chicken costume purely for fun, and loved his fans, often asking them to sing him a song in exchange for his autograph.

Yet it has been often repeated that underscoring it all was his devotion to family life with his children, Kristina and Preston, and his wife of almost 60 years, Maj. When he died four years ago of leukaemia, aged 81, tributes poured in from all over the world.

A consummate storyteller, he might well have enjoyed his daughter Kristina’s new book The Eternal Party, an account of growing up in the Hagman household. But while she plainly adores her father, her story also highlights the fact it wasn’t all non-stop fun for a young child.

‘People want to believe that he found it easy to quit drinking,’ says Kristina, 58. ‘And they want to believe that he was faithful to my mother and that was easy, too. But it’s just not true.’

Perhaps the most surprising revelation in her book is that Hagman had several extramarital affairs while claiming publicly that ‘I never had the predilection or the opportunity’.

Yet all the while ‘he honoured my mother and loved her’, says Kristina.

She describes a fun-loving, chaotic household.

Perhaps the most surprising revelation in Kristina Hagman's (second right, with Larry, Maj and Preston) book is that Hagman had several extramarital affairs while claiming publicly that ‘I never had the predilection or the opportunity’

It was the mid-Sixties when Hagman achieved his first TV hit show, I Dream of Jeannie, but even before then, he and his Swedish wife Maj (pronounced ‘My’) loved a party. Kristina was often woken by late-night festivities and was just three when she inadvertently experienced her first hangover, after drinking dregs of wine from the previous night’s celebrations.

The free-wheeling Sixties and Seventies certainly suited her father’s sensibilities.

When the hard-living actor Jack Nicholson introduced him to marijuana in 1964 to try to curtail his drinking, Hagman later admitted: ‘It didn’t work because I just did both.’

Larry pictured with his mother, Mary Martin

Kristina was eight when she ate two brownies her parents had hidden, not knowing they were laced with marijuana, and had her first drug experience.

By 17, she had tried LSD and, a year later, at her father’s suggestion, they took it together. Kristina did so hoping she could ‘at last understand who he was’, but admits that ‘while I wouldn’t say I didn’t like it, I don’t think you ever recover from it’.

Hagman once said LSD made him feel intensely aware of ‘how absolutely alone you are’ and perhaps his partying and need for attention masked a deep loneliness.

‘He loved his family around him and he liked the TV and the music going at the same time — he didn’t like silence,’ says Kristina.

‘He was very affectionate and a joy to be with, but never liked to talk about personal things or anything that upset him.’

Kristina admits that doing drugs together did, however, prove a bonding experience for her parents. Once, needing time together alone, they entrusted their children to a friend, who was also a drug user, and headed to Montreal.

But while they were away, Kristina was sexually abused in her bedroom by three teenage boys. She was eight years old.

Kristina only told her parents about the incident 19 years later, when she was 27, after attending an anti-abuse rally. She wanted them to comfort her, but they said nothing.

‘I just don’t think they could deal with it,’ she says.

Kristina also recalls that when she was 15, Dennis Hopper, the star of Easy Rider who died in 2010, showed up at the family home while her parents were out. He had friends with him, all high on drugs, and when Hopper announced, ‘Get her in the Jacuzzi. I want to f*** her,’ Kristina’s survival instinct kicked in and she bolted.

Larry and Maj were married for several decades

Both her parents were alcoholics and she is anxious to dismiss the myth perpetuated by her father that he was instantly able to give up drinking when, after being diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver in 1992, then liver cancer three years later, he underwent a liver transplant.

Yes, he quit for several months, but within a few years his drinking was again excessive. ‘I’d refuse to drink with him, but it really didn’t do any good. He just found me boring and a wet blanket,’ says Kristina.

‘But he was so grateful after the transplant, so he really encouraged organ donorship.

‘He also told me that he would pick up drunks off the street in downtown Los Angeles and take them somewhere to sober up. He was full of contradictions.’

Nowhere more so, seemingly, than in his marriage to dress designer Maj Axelsson. He always spoke lovingly of her and was proud his marriage survived for six decades.

At the same time, ‘Dad was good at camouflaging things,’ says Kristina.

‘I think he had lovers like this — people we all knew, people who were a part of our lives, who regularly had dinner with the family.’

After he died, women would ‘go to some lengths’ to tell Kristina that her father was the most important man in their lives.

‘The success of Dallas gave him everything he could want, so maybe having a secret gave him something extra,’ says Kristina. ‘But my parents adored each other and I don’t think either of them ever wanted to divorce.’

However, Maj did struggle with his infidelities. Kristina says she was hurt when in 1994 a magazine reported on an alleged affair of Hagman’s.

‘After that, you can see a real upturn in all the interviews he gave, talking about the most perfect marriage in Hollywood and declaring that he had never cheated on my mother.’

Why did Maj go along with it if it wasn’t true?

‘Mum wouldn’t have wanted to be thought of as lacking in any wifely ways, so him denying it allowed her to have some pride. But she did suffer.’

Larry was one of the most recognizable television actors of all time after appearing as JR Ewing in Dallas opposite Linda Gray who played his wife Sue Ellen

Several years ago, Maj was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia and she is now, at 88, in a care home. ‘Dad looked after her for about five years,’ says Kristina.

Hagman had to take over the cooking and shopping, and help Maj look after herself.

In 2012, he was delighted when Dallas was brought back to TV, reuniting him with his old co-stars and returning him to the spotlight.

He died just five months after its relaunch, however, following complications from acute myeloid leukaemia. He was surrounded by his loved ones, including his girlfriend — a woman the same age as Kristina whom he had kept secret for about two years.

His daughter admits she is still learning things about her father. ‘No amount of money made him feel really comforted,’ she says. ‘At parties he would steal the bread rolls, telling us, “Put these in your pocket” as if we were destitute!’

Kristina says his last words to her before he died were: ‘Forgive me.’

‘For a fun-loving guy, he had his struggles,’ she says.

‘But doesn’t that just make it more interesting that he was a three-dimensional character as opposed to a cardboard cutout?’

The Eternal Party, by Kristina Hagman, is published in Britain and the U.S. on June 7 by Thomas Dunne.