"I understand what it looks to the outside world. I really do," the Laguna Beach star, 37, said on her podcast Let's Be Honest last month. "I get that. He is not a typical 24-year-old in the same way that I don't think I was a typical 24-year-old….I really think age is just a number. It's what you've been through in your life, how you were raised. There are just so many factors that go into maturity other than age."
Others, however, have poked fun at their age disparities—like George Clooney did while looking back at his early crush on now-wife Amal Clooney.
"I liked her, but I didn't want to jump the shark on it," the Oscar winner, 62, toldHoward Stern about the early days of his relationship with the human rights lawyer, 46. "I couldn't tell if she liked me. 'Cause I'm 17 years older than her, so she might've thought I was grandpa."
And then, of course, there's what everyone else thinks, with the heap of the judgement generally cast the woman's way.
"It's always the woman's fault," Katharine McPhee, 40, reflected on Dr. Berlin's Informed Pregnancy Podcast while talking about the way people can judge her marriage to David Foster, 74. "Like, 'It's the woman who wants to be with the older man because he has money and he's had success and she wants this, that.' And our story has been the complete opposite."
Not that she cares, really. "It doesn't matter," the Smash star insisted, "because as long as you know the story and you're in love with your own story, that's what's important."
And, yet, dare we say, the debate over these romances is one for the ages. See what more famous pairs have said about the space between them.
Sarah Paulson & Holland Taylor
Heidi Klum & Tom Kaulitz
Priyanka Chopra & Nick Jonas
Sam Taylor-Johnson & Aaron Taylor-Johnson
Michael Douglas & Catherine Zeta-Jones
Dennis Quaid & Laura Savoie
Hilaria & Alec Baldwin
Felicity Blunt & Stanley Tucci
Oli Green & Sienna Miller
Jeff Goldblum & Emilie Livingston
Rosie Huntington-Whiteley & Jason Statham
David Foster & Katharine McPhee
Kristin Cavallari & Mark Estes
Amal & George Clooney
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