19 Movies That Resulted In Major Celebrity Break-Ups
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As we all know, there's an entire business run on the backs of Hollywood power couples, from tabloid journalism to social media fan pages to branding empires with the power to touch millions.
Yet as much as we love to see the wonderful people of show business get together, there's just as much (if not more) interest in seeing our favorite celebrity couples fall apart, whether it's from a scandal, an explosive falling out, or even a film shoot that drove the final nail in their relationship's coffin.
With this in mind, I've assembled 19 movies that, for one reason or another, were the final straw for these A-list lovebirds.
1.Jersey Girl (2004)
For our younger readers, you may not have known just how all-encompassing the media attention on "Bennifer" had been in the early '00s, with Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck's faces adorning every tabloid, magazine, newspaper, and entertainment-oriented news broadcast for the better part of three years. Though the couple had found their individual success in the film and music industries, they essentially became a walking punchline after Martin Brest's Gigli became a major critical and commercial failure. With the media attention accelerating to the point where the pair had to cancel their wedding in September 2003, "Bennifer" officially called it quits as poor reviews began to roll in for Jersey Girl in early 2004, forcing panicking producers to cut Lopez's role to barely more than a cameo. However, Lopez and Affleck would later rekindle their romance nearly 20 years later after their own series of high-profile (and ultimately doomed) relationships, and finally married in 2022.
2.Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)
Before "Bennifer" was the tabloid "It" couple, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston were considered Hollywood's hottest pairing, with the two notably gorgeous stars of big and small screen fare being nearly unable to shake paparazzi for the entirety of their seven-year relationship. But in 2004, rumors began to swirl about the chemistry between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie on the set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, an action thriller about married assassins who are hired to kill one another. While Pitt is insistent that no infidelity occurred on the film's set, Pitt and Aniston filed for divorce three months before the film was set to be released, and Pitt and Jolie were spotted together on vacation only a month later. As it turns out, the personal drama surrounding Mr. & Mrs. Smith helped propel the film to massive success.
3.Dream House (2011)
Chances are you probably don't remember this critically-panned horror thriller, which was dumped into theaters in September 2011 to little fanfare despite its surprisingly strong star power. However, two people who will always remember Dream House are stars Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz, who reconnected while filming the movie in early 2010. However, the fireworks between the pair came at the expense of filmmaker Darren Aronofsky, who had been dating Weisz for nearly 10 years. Unsurprisingly, Weisz and Aronofsky separated soon after production concluded, and Craig married Weisz in a private ceremony the following year.
4.Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
When Mia Farrow was cast as Rosemary in Rosemary's Baby, her then-husband Frank Sinatra did not take kindly to the news, having opposed the nature of the source material and believed she should put her career on hold to focus on their marriage. Halfway through filming, Sinatra sent a lawyer to publicly serve Farrow with divorce papers, spurring the actress to ask producer Robert Evans to release her from her contract. In Evans's legendary audiobook, The Kid Stays in the Picture, the producer recounted hastily arranging a rough cut of the film to show Farrow her performance thus far, which inspired her to finish filming and call off the marriage with Sinatra for good, even though the pair would remain on friendly terms until Sinatra's death in 1998.
5.The Getaway (1972)
Speaking of Robert Evans, the Hollywood power player and producer of The Godfather would find himself at the center of a high-profile break-up several years later. While producing the iconic romantic drama Love Story, Robert Evans met up-and-coming star Ali MacGraw, marrying her a little over a year before that film's release would turn her into an international star practically overnight. However, Evans's preoccupations in his professional and personal life soured their marriage in short order. Upon meeting her costar, Steve McQueen, MacGraw became instantly attracted to the actor and engaged in a not-so-subtle off-screen affair with the actor, which led to her divorce from Evans and her subsequent marriage to McQueen.
6.The Rum Diary (2011)
Johnny Depp had many relationships in the public eye over the years with the likes of Sherilyn Fenn, Winona Ryder, and Kate Moss. But many figured the actor had found his "one" in French singer and actress Vanessa Paradis, with whom he had and raised his two children. However, rumblings surfaced about Depp's off-screen tension with star Amber Heard on the set of The Rum Diary, who had been dating artist Tasya van Ree during the film's production. Soon after the release of The Rum Diary, both Heard and Depp broke up with their long-time partners and began dating, leading to a tumultuous marriage and divorce that has since turned into one of the most notorious defamation battles of the century.
7.The Misfits (1961)
Though the film is now revered as a masterpiece of its time, the production behind The Misfits was anything but a dream, as production woes on the set in the Nevada desert worsened as the temperature rose around them. However, the most troubling developments to come out of the shooting of The Misfits was the devolving marriage between esteemed playwright Arthur Miller and cultural icon Marilyn Monroe. With Monroe's substance abuse issues and depression escalating to the degree that Monroe had to be hospitalized for two weeks, Miller was forced to constantly rewrite her part on a near daily basis. The damage to the relationship during this time was unrecoverable, as Monroe and Miller divorced shortly before the film's premiere in 1961.
8.Green Lantern (2011)
At the time that Green Lantern began production, both Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively were in notable celebrity relationships, with the former married to Scarlett Johansson while the latter was dating Penn Badgley. However, their palpable chemistry was undeniable, and both relationships came to an end within a year of the film's shoot. The rumor mill began churning after Reynolds and Lively attended the Green Lantern premiere together, but they were all-but-confirmed as a couple after being spotted together during the shooting of R.I.P.D. only a few months later.
9.Machete (2010)
This entry is actually a double-edged sword for Robert Rodriguez, as his affair with Planet Terror leading lady Rose McGowan in April 2006 set the production of Grindhouse into a monthlong standstill as he recovered from the dissolution of his marriage to his longtime production partner, Elizabeth Avellan. The three-year relationship that spawned out of Grindhouse between McGowan and Rodriguez eventually came to an end only one month after the filming of Rodriguez's Machete concluded in the fall of 2009, in which McGowan's campy assassin character was subsequently cut from the film entirely.
10.Stop-Loss (2008)
For many years, Ryan Phillippe and Reese Witherspoon had been known as an idyllic Hollywood couple, never drawing enough drama to warrant incessant tabloid coverage while keeping their family life largely private. However, that all changed in 2006, when Phillippe fell for his Stop-Loss costar Abbie Cornish during the film's shoot throughout Morocco and Texas. The power couple split soon thereafter, with Witherspoon citing their public divorce "humiliating and very isolating," while Phillippe and Cornish would eventually go their own ways in 2010.
11.Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
Anyone who followed the rocky romance between Twilight costars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson is familiar with the scandalous dalliance that was the beginning of the end for the young celebrity couple. Shortly after the premiere of Stewart's blockbuster 2012 film Snow White and the Huntsman, she was photographed having an affair with the movie's director, Rupert Sanders, who himself was caught cheating on his wife, actress Liberty Ross. Though Stewart would briefly reconcile with Pattinson after a public apology, Sanders would go through divorce proceedings only a few months later.
12.Cleopatra (1963)
Before Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton became "Liz and Dick," the pair were both part of their own respective celebrity marriages upon signing on to the film Cleopatra, with Taylor married to singer/actor/television host Eddie Fisher and Burton hitched to his Last Days of Dolwyn costar and future nightclub founder Sybil Williams. Alas, the sparks between Burton and Taylor on their first scene together in Cleopatra were instantaneous, and the two would embark on a love affair that would change the shape of Hollywood forever. Following their respective divorces, Williams would marry The Wild Ones singer Jordan Christopher after securing a $1 million divorce settlement, Fisher would briefly marry actress Connie Stevens, and Burton and Taylor would have the most infamous on-and-off-again relationship in show business history.
13.By the Sea (2015)
Ten years after connecting on the set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt would reconnect for a heavy relationship drama written and directed by Jolie titled By the Sea. A low-budget film anchored by the appearance of "Brangelina," the film's somber tone, and grief-driven plot was not enough to entice audiences to see Jolie's passion project on the big screen, while critics wrote off the project as well. Less than a year after the film's disastrous release, Pitt and Jolie filed for divorce, ending their 12-year relationship amid reports of volatile behavior from Pitt; the former couple has since been embroiled in a massive lawsuit over their shares of their French wine business, Miraval.
14.Days of Thunder (1990)
In 1987, Tom Cruise was already a major star in Hollywood upon his marriage to actress Mimi Rogers, who introduced him to scientology over the course of their relationship. Though the marriage was faltering by the time Cruise was cast as the lead of Days of Thunder, he immediately became smitten with his costar Nicole Kidman. In fact, former Church of Scientology executive Mike Rinder claims in his tell-all book that Cruise asked higher-ups in the church to expedite a divorce agreement from Rogers so he could marry Kidman, which not only drove the nail in their marriage's coffin but ultimately motivated Rogers to quit the church despite having been affiliated with scientology for her entire life at that point.
15.Layer Cake (2004)
British tabloids couldn't get enough of the strange and troubled engagement between performers Jude Law and Sienna Miller in the early-to-mid-'00s, including Law's extramarital affair with his children's nanny mere months after proposing. However, the doomed engagement was further complicated by reports of Miller having an affair with costar Daniel Craig on the set of their stylish crime thriller, Layer Cake, which was confirmed by Miller's driver at the time as well as her court statement during her phone hacking trial against News Corp. After the report surfaced, Law did try to take advantage of the report in the court of public opinion, asking News of the World to request the coverage be "backdated" to put Miller in a more negative light following their break-up.
16.Don’t Worry Darling (2022)
After losing the initially cast Shia LaBeouf, Olivia Wilde cast Harry Styles to headline her sophomore film, Don't Worry Darling, during the production of which she fell for her leading man. Shortly after the film wrapped in late 2020, Wilde and then-husband Jason Sudeikis announced their divorce after the couple had privately separated earlier in the year. While Sudeikis hoped to reconcile with Wilde, Wilde and Styles were outed as a couple in early 2021, with further reports stating they actually began dating during filming. Though Wilde contests that her relationship with Sudeikis had been over prior to filming and that the pair would remain on amicable terms as they raise their children, Sudeikis serving the performer/filmmaker with custody papers publicly at CinemaCon in April 2022 seems to say otherwise.
17.Honey Boy (2019)
Shia LaBeouf's most personal project to date, Honey Boy, may have pushed him forward professionally (albeit briefly so) but sent the actor downwards in his personal life. Having met his then-wife Mia Goth on the set of Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac, LaBeouf would begin a relationship with Honey Boy costar FKA twigs shortly after the film wrapped production in June 2018. Divorcing Goth during this time, LaBeouf's relationship with FKA twigs would later crumble, with the latter publicly detailing the abusive nature of LaBeouf's behavior and even alleged that the actor gunned down stray dogs in preparation for his role as a gangster in The Tax Collector, while Goth would later reunite with LaBeouf in 2022, giving birth to their first child after their reconciliation was made public.
18.Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
By the early 1990s, James Cameron was one of the most in-demand filmmakers on the planet while his wife, Kathryn Bigelow, established herself as an emerging cinematic voice to watch. While Bigelow was neck-deep in production of the Cameron-produced Point Break, Cameron became immersed in filming his own studio blockbuster, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which would reunite the director with the predecessor's stars, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton. Cameron would fall for Hamilton during the shoot, moving in together after filming wrapped. The rest is history: Bigelow would divorce Cameron (though they still continued on good terms as collaborators on the film Strange Days), Cameron would eventually leave Hamilton for Titanic performer Suzy Amis during the filming of that picture, and Bigelow would become the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director. Who did she defeat for such a prestigious honor? Her ex-husband, of course!
19.Proof of Life (2000)
Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid's Hollywood romance was once the talk of Tinseltown, but after nearly a decade as husband and wife, the relationship had soured beyond repair. As such, it wasn't much of a surprise when Meg Ryan began a not-so-private affair with costar Russell Crowe on the set of Proof of Life, partly spurned on by her husband's alleged previous affairs. With Quaid and Ryan's separation announced shortly after filming had concluded on Proof of Life, Ryan and Crowe would continue to date for less than a year before Ryan "broke Crowe's heart" by not wanting another committed relationship so soon after her divorce.
