Bodyguard David Roberts said his relationship with singer Whitney Houston was the inspiration for the famous movie ‘The Bodyguard’.

In an interview with Dailymail at his home in Florida, bodyguard David Roberts revealed untold stories about music legend Whitney Houston, on the occasion of the upcoming release of his memoir Protecting Whitney .

David was Whitney’s bodyguard from 1988 to 1995, the early glory of the late diva’s music career, who died in 2012 at the age of 48 from a drug overdose.

David Roberts, a former Welsh police officer, was Whitney Houston’s bodyguard for nearly 10 years. Photo: Rex

David, 73, said he once wanted to break the boundaries of a bodyguard because of his special feelings for Whitney Houston.

One night, when Whitney leaned her head affectionately on his shoulder, he wanted to “give up everything” to follow his heart. However, David said in the interview that he was wise enough to stop.

“As a security guard, I was completely focused on keeping her safe. If you cross that line, you lose your objectivity and that puts the person you’re protecting at risk,” David explained. “That’s why Frank Farmer (played by Kevin Costner in the 1992 film The Bodyguard ) and Rachel Marron (Whitney Houston) can’t be together.”

Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner in the movie ‘The Bodyguard’.

David said most of the details in this romantic film are true to life. “Little details like Rachel clinging to the back of a bodyguard’s shirt to escape the crowd of fans. That’s how we did it,” he said.

According to the bodyguard, the name Rachel Marron was also the name he often used to book hotel rooms for Whitney Houston.

He also revealed that he still keeps a piece of paper with a sweet message that Whitney wrote to him more than 35 years ago: “It was a note and she slipped it under my room door at the Regency Hotel in Hong Kong in 1988. I still have it. The paper has faded over time but is still very precious to me.”

Whitney Houston at a party in 1989. Photo: Ron Galella

According to Dailymail , David Roberts worked as a police officer for many years before starting a private security business, specializing in protecting diplomats and executives.

When he was asked to be Whitney Houston’s bodyguard in 1988, he was not interested. David said the US Embassy in London, where he had worked, had contacted him to provide protection for the singer while she was on her Moment Of Truth tour in the UK. At the time, Whitney was the most famous pop singer in the world, but David felt the assignment was frivolous and assumed she was a snobbish star.

However, when he met her at Heathrow, David completely changed his opinion. He found Whitney “charming, shy, introverted, polite and one of the most beautiful women I have ever met”.

He also realized that protecting the 23-year-old singer from a series of threats was a big challenge because there were many crazy fans following her and “crazy men” who could endanger her life. Among them, a crazy fan in Australia bought tickets to the concert and sent Whitney a letter, expressing his determination to take the singer “to meet his dead mother and they will live together forever”.

Whitney Houston’s marriage to singer Bobby Brown in 1992 further soured the sentiment among fans, the bodyguard said. Twenty-three intruders attempted to scale the fence of the wedding grounds and countless people sent letters expressing their anger and frustration, David recalled.

David suffered a head injury and scars after defending Whitney Houston during a fight between her brother, Michael, and a racist gang in Kentucky.

During his years protecting Whitney, David witnessed the peak of her fame as well as the singer’s decline due to an unhappy marriage and drug use. He knew early on that her tumultuous marriage to Bobby Brown would end in disaster because of her husband’s philandering.

In his memoir, David Roberts recounts Whitney Houston’s drug abuse in 1995 while filming Waiting To Exhale . The singer’s health was so bad that a throat specialist warned her that she could lose her voice. David said he wrote a letter of concern to the singer’s lawyer, telling her that members of her entourage were supplying her with drugs. A week later, David was fired. He never saw or spoke to her again.

“No one around this young girl wants to deal with her drug use because Whitney brings in so much money for them,” the bodyguard said.

Whitney Houston died in a bathtub from the effects of cocaine and heart disease. Photo: Redferns

David Roberts said he was still grieving the singer’s death in 2012 and heartbroken when her daughter, Bobbi Kristina, also tragically passed away in 2015 from a drug overdose.