Celebrities Who Have Been in Open or Polyamorous Relationships
Whether you’ve been in a polyamorous relationship for years or you know you’re a monogamous person, it’s always interesting learning about the different ways people love one another. Over the years, multiple celebrities have opened up about their non-monogamous relationships (and have worked to break the stigma around it)!
So you may be asking yourself: “Is there a difference between a polyamorous relationship and an open relationship?” There are quite a few! Keep in mind, there are a bunch of different types of non-monogamous relationships out there, but the two most well-known are simply known as a “polyamorous relationship” and an “open relationship.”
Open relationships are about exploring all kinds of different connections with people, whether it be romantic, sexual, or otherwise, per Live Bold & Bloom. And polyamory is more often about exploring multiple romantic or sexual relationships, depending on your arrangements.
And before we continue, let’s talk about a huge misconception. Polyamory and open relationships are not the same as cheating. These arrangements between multiple people are all consensual and all about communication.
Now that we got that out of the way, let’s talk about the A-listers who’ve opened up about these relationships.
While there have been more high-profile open relationships like with Elliot Page, Kate Mara and Max Minghella, many celebrities have chosen to keep their multiple partners away from the public eye (but will divulge some details about the arrangements)!
Check out which celebrities have been in open and/or polyamorous relationships over the years below:
A version of this article was originally published on June 2023.
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Elliot Page
In his 2023 memoir, Elliot Page revealed that he was once a third partner in actress Kate Mara’s relationship with Max Minghella.
Page revealed that they had a brief romance, that Minghella was fully aware of, while 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, prior to Page’s 2020 transition.
“I think my relationship, or whatever you want to call it with Kate, very much encapsulates a certain dynamic that I consistently found myself in, which was falling for people that — I think a lot of us do this — who aren’t fully available,” he wrote.
Kate Mara & Max Minghella
Though neither Mara nor Minghella have ever addressed Page’s memoir, they were reportedly onboard with Page revealing their open relationship.
In the book, Page claims that Mara said: “I never thought I could be in love with two people and now I know I can.’”
Mara and Minghella’s four year romance fizzled out shortly after Page and Mara’s fling ended.
Charlie Sheen
Charlie Sheen made headlines back in 2011 when he revealed that he was living with two 24-year-old girlfriends that he dubbed the “goddesses,” Natalie Kenly, a graphic designer and Rachel Oberlin, an adult film star.
“You’ve read about the goddesses, come on. They’re an international sensation. These are my girlfriends. These are the women that I love that have completed the three parts of my heart,” Sheen said in an interview with ABC News.
“It seems crazy to everybody else, but for us it works,” Kenly said in the same interview. The throuple seemed to have split by the end of 2011.
DeRay Davis
In a 2017 appearance on The Real, comedian DeRay Davis discussed his throuple relationship, revealing he had been with one of his girlfriends for five years and another for two and a half.
“They’re very comfortable, because I’m very open. I don’t make it where it’s all, ‘Oooh, look what I’m doing!’ I’m not a player,” DeRay said.
He and girlfriends Coco Crawford and Caro Peguero also appeared together on his 2016 Oxygen show “Living with Funny.”
Georges LeBar & RuPaul
Georges LeBar and RuPaul have been in an open marriage for years now. Per Ok Magazine, RuPaul said, “It’s just realistic. There’s no such thing as monogamy with men.”
Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton explained in her new documentary for Channel 5 entitled Dolly Parton: In Her Own Words, per DailyMail, that he and her husband of over 50 years Carl Dean have an “open” relationship, but not in the way you may think.
“Short, fat, bald or skinny — I’ve had crushes on some very unusual men,” she said, elaborating on why she calls men her “weakness.” She added, “Carl knows I’ll always come home and I’m not having sex with these people — I’m just flirting and having fun.”
So their open relationship isn’t sexual, unlike many other open relationships we’ve seen in Tinseltown. Parton ended by saying, “Yes, it’s an open relationship, but not sexually and I would kill him if I thought he was doing that. He would shoot me too. At the end of the day we love each other madly.”
Shailene Woodley
One person you may be shocked to find on this list is Divergent star Shailene Woodley. In an April 2020 interview with the New York Times, she talked openly about her private experiences of being in an open relationship. “Listen, I’m someone who has experienced both an open relationship and a deeply monogamous relationship in my life, and I think we’re in a day and age where there should be no rules except for the ones designed by two people in a partnership — or three people, whatever floats your boat,” she said.
She added, “But there has to be a level of responsibility in any relationship dynamic, and that responsibility is simply honesty and communication and trust. Apart from that, it’s really none of our business what people choose to do with their lives.”
Bella Thorne
Bella Thorne’s only high-profile, open relationship in the past was with Tana Mongeau and Mod Sun. While the former Disney Channel star received a lot of backlash for this, she defended her dating choices and even called it “fun.”
“If it works, you can spend a weekend with two people and you’re all hanging out and having fun and smoking, and like, sharing stories up late at night,” she said in a 2019 interview with Cosmopolitan. “It’s a really fun experience and I have been able to capture that a couple times, and I just love that idea. I love loving two people at once.”
Tana Mongeau
YouTube star Tana Mongeau’s most high-profile polyamorous relationship was with Bella Thorne and Mod Sun. She talked about her relationship in a YouTube video, saying that she was originally in a relationship with Thorne, and then their relationship grew to a throuple with the three of them. She revealed that it made her learn a lot about herself, “Being in that relationship taught me so much about myself and polyamory and openness and how close-minded the world can be — and how open-minded the world can be.”
She was in another open relationship with Jake Paul.
Mod Sun
As we said, Mod Sun was in a polyamorous relationship with Tana Mongeau and Bella Thorne. While he hasn’t spoken openly about the throuple, he did talk about his monogamous relationship with Thorne after he and Mongeau broke it off.
Willow Smith
Along with her parents, Willow Smith opened up about her preference for polyamory back in 2019 for Red Table Talk, per Elite Daily. She said, “I love men and women equally, and so I would definitely want one man, one woman. I feel like I could be polyfidelitous with those two people. I’m not the kind of person that is constantly looking for new sexual experiences.”
Will Smith & Jada Pinkett Smith
Probably one of the most well-known couples who have dabbled in an open relationship is Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith. Along with talking about it on Red Table Talk with her daughter Willow, Jada talked about their open agreement during a 2013 interview with HuffPost Live. “I’ve always told Will, ‘You can do whatever you want as long as you can look at yourself in the mirror and be OK,’ because at the end of the day, Will is his own man,” she said. “I’m here as his partner, but he is his own man. He has to decide who he wants to be and that’s not for me to do for him. Or vice versa.”
Will spoke about it nearly a decade before in 2005 to DailyMail, saying, “You’re going to be attracted to people. In our marriage vows, we didn’t say ‘forsaking all others.’… If it came down to it, then one can say to the other, ‘Look, I need to have sex with somebody. I’m not going to if you don’t approve of it — but please approve of it.'”
Baron Vaughn
Grace & Frankie star Baron Vaughn has previously spoken about non-monogamous relationships. Back in 2017, he spoke to Reality Bytes about how there are so many kinds and how you should communicate through it all.
He said, “It can be daunting, it depends what you want out of it. And also what style you do, because there are many styles. There’ve been a couple times where I’ve been in a triad, which is essentially an equilateral ‘throuple,’ some people might call it, where everyone was in a relationship with everyone else.”
Nico Tortorella
Probably the most well-known celebrity who’s open about their experiences with polyamory is Nico Tortorella. Tortoella and their partner Bethany C. Meyers have been in a polyamorous relationship, and have spoken openly about it over the years. They explained to Out about their setup, saying, “I am kind of a serial monogamist in my polyamory. ‘ve explained this term before, but it’s a lot of fancy words jumbled together for, I love dating one person at a time. I’m married, yes, but I love dating one person at a time. I have a partner in LA that I’ve had for a long time, but I’m not his only partner; he’s not my only partner.
Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman and his estranged wife Amanda Palmer were in an open marriage for years. Towards the beginning of their marriage, they kept things open, but per DailyMail, Palmer ended the non-monogamy when their son turned four. Sadly, the pair revealed to fans that they planned to divorce in 2022.
Ezra Miller
Ezra Miller revealed in a 2018 interview with Playboy Magazine, via Teen Vogue, that they were practicing nonmonogamy with a close cirlce of friends who they referred to as a “polycule” — a term that combines “polyamorous” and “molecule.”
“I’m trying to find queer beings who understand me as a queer being off the bat, who I make almost a familial connection with, and I feel like I’m married to them 25 lifetimes ago from the moment we meet,” he said. “And then they are in the squad — the polycule. And I know they’re going to love everyone else in the polycule because we’re in the polycule, and we love each other so much.”
YUNGBLUD
In a previous, now archived interview with Attitude Magazine, YUNGBLUD talked about learning he was polyamorous. “I probably would say now, I am polyamorous. Before I didn’t f***ing know what I was. I was meeting people and learning… by meeting them and talking about sexuality and gender, I [was] going, ‘Oh my f***ing God, maybe I’m this, if I’m going to be f***ing close to anything on the spectrum.'”
William Daniels & Bonnie Bartlett
William Daniels and Bonnie Bartlett had some type of open marriage, with she detailed in her memoir, saying at one point, she “could no longer tolerate any kind of open marriage.”
“The marriage could have broken apart at any time those first 10 years, if one of us had, say, fallen in love with somebody, but we never did,” she said, per People. “That was never part of it. Both of us really wanted to be together. The love has never stopped.”
