Cary Grant’s Ex-Wife Dyan Cannon, 88, Says She Has ‘Friends With Benefits’: ‘Several Special’ People

Dyan Cannon is thriving in her love life at 88, and the Academy Award winner isn’t afraid to talk about it.

While appearing at the 10th Annual Hollywood Beauty Awards on Sunday, April 6, Dyan was asked if she was dating. “Of course,” she responded to People, adding that she is seeing “somebody very special.”

“Several special [people] … I have friends with benefits, yes,” she added.

The Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice actress was married to first husband Cary Grant from 1965 to 1968 and to second husband Stanley Fimberg from 1985 to 1991. With Cary, she welcomed one daughter, Jennifer Grant, in 1966. Cary died in 1986 at age 82.

Dyan has opened up about her marriage to the England-born actor and what made her fall in love with him.

“About four months ago, I was going through my safe, and I found some notes from him that were so adorable, and made me understand why I fell in love with him,” she told Page Six in a December 2023 interview.

She recalled the ups and downs of their three-year marriage in her 2011 memoir, Dear Cary: My Life with Cary Grant.

“I never knew what was going to set him off next, and when he wasn’t at work he trailed me around the house, listing my shortcomings,” Dyan penned. “I didn’t place a coaster under my water glass. I parked my car in the driveway crooked. I shouldn’t be so friendly to the postman because he might get the wrong idea, or to the maid because it was good to keep a distance.”

The Such Good Friends actress admitted that she omitted some other details about their relationship from the memoir.

“The thing that was really challenging for me in writing the book was what to say and what not to say,” Dyan shared. “Cary had so many people who loved him and I didn’t want to take the stars out of their eyes … [mine] disappeared for a while but, curiously, the stars are back in my eyes again.”

The comments about having “several” friends with benefits came not too long after Dyan dished on her rapport with Johnny Carson in The Hidden Side of Johnny Carson, where she described him as “Warm, open, willing. I’ve never known anyone like him. I’ve never known anyone like Johnny.”

“Cary was more of an enigma,” she said. “Much more of a, ‘Can I approach him or can’t I?’ But people would approach Johnny as if he were family.”

Dyan appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny in 1985, holding Johnny’s hand in the segment. “Hi, sweetheart,” she said to him during the appearance, causing him to get flustered.

“We’ve gone out a couple of times, right?” he asked her at the time.

“I rattled him, and I love that. We love it when we rattle men who aren’t usually rattled, don’t we?” Dyan reflected. “He loved it. He loved it. We used to go to restaurants, and they’d shut down the entire restaurant for him.”

“He was a special man,” she said. “I’ve known a lot of special men. And there’s more to come.”