Famous Actors Who Dumped Their Spouses For Costars

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In late 2016, Ewan McGregor — who had been married to Eve Mavrakis for 22 years — joined the cast of FX's third season of Fargo, playing the dual role of the Stussy brothers, one of whom was lovers with Nikki, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who was also married. Well, life imitated art as photos emerged in October 2017 of McGregor and Winstead kissing and getting cuddly at a London restaurant. The previous May, McGregor had separated from his wife (though they were still legally married), and — wouldn't you know it? — that same month, Winstead announced the end of her marriage.
It's unknown if McGregor and Winstead's relationship began, shall we say...physically...before May, or if they just developed a strong, non-intimate bond on set...but either way there was a lot of drama online in the immediate aftermath of the couple being publicly outed. McGregor's then-22-year-old daughter Clara called Winstead a "piece of trash" on Instagram, but, in an interview with the Times, said it wasn't her "finest moment," adding, "It wasn't the right way to go about things, but it's a hard thing to wrap your head around when you feel you had this idea of what the family unit is and then to have that shift. It's very weird." Mavrakis, meanwhile, appeared to respond to a different Instagram comment which read: "I can't believe Ewan would end things with u for that cheap (expletive)! U are so much better than him!!!! Take him for every penny u can!!!!" by replying: "What can I do?" Winstead's ex-husband was also reported by British tabloids to have posted angrily about the split, although Riley Stearns strongly denied writing the message, saying he'd been hacked or that the image of the message circulating online (reading: "Fuck the woman of my dreams behind my back, will ya? @mewins @mscregor_ewan You're FUCKING dead…") had been photoshopped.
All drama aside, McGregor and Winstead have since married and welcomed a son, and last year, when McGregor received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, his daughters, Winstead, and their son were all by his side.
Want to hear how a Lifetime movie launched one of the most scandalous affairs of the late 2000s? Well, that's what happened when LeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian met filming Northern Lights in 2008. At the time, Rimes (the singer and actor) was married to dancer Dean Sheremet, and Third Watch star Cibrian was married to Brandi Glanville, who would later channel the fallout into a Real Housewives career. The affair started on set — with kisses caught on a restaurant security camera, according to US magazine — and was obvious to Sheremet when he visited. He said, "There was this bar that everyone hung out at after set and I remember coming down the stairs and seeing the two of them shooting pool together. I could just tell by the body language that everything had changed. My stomach dropped... I literally felt like I got hit."
Glanville, meanwhile, slashed the tires of Cibrian's motorcycles, and then, writing for Glamour, said, "My heartache probably lasted a lot longer than it should have, because in the old days, you broke up with someone, you never saw me again. You're not seeing pictures of how in love they are. I started to drink too much. I would cry all day. I began taking an antidepressant. I got a DUI and realized I needed to wake up and let go. I said to myself, 'You know what, Brandi? You have a life to live. Why are you obsessing over these two people?'"
By 2009, Rimes and Cibrian had separated from their spouses, finalizing divorces the following year. The backlash was brutal, especially for Rimes, who'd built her career as a sweet country ingénue, and was suddenly painted in a negative light. She later told People, "I did one of the most selfish things that I possibly could do, in hurting someone else. I take responsibility for everything I've done. I hate that people got hurt, but I don't regret the outcome." Despite the scandalous start, their love has lasted...they are still married today.
Let's continue with a wild one (even if it didn't break up a marriage). In the late '90s, Billy Bob Thornton and Laura Dern were in a serious relationship and even lived together. But then Thornton was cast alongside Angelina Jolie in the air traffic controller comedy Pushing Tin. While filming, Thornton and the nearly 20 years younger Jolie hit it off, and in May 2000, they married in Vegas in a move that shocked everyone, but no one more than Laura Dern. She told Talk magazine, "I left our home to work on a movie (likely the Hallmark movie A Season for Miracles) and while I was away, my boyfriend got married. I've never heard from him again. It's like a sudden death. You don't get to mourn or negotiate."
Meanwhile, the Thornton-Jolie relationship was...strange. They wore vials of each other's blood around their necks, made out on red carpets (and bragged about having sex in the limo on the way over), and gave interviews that made even hardened publicists need a vacation. The couple divorced in 2003.
As for Dern, she went on to win an Oscar for Marriage Story, star in Big Little Lies, and become pretty universally beloved. She also married (and later divorced) musician Ben Harper, with whom she has two kids.
You'd think Jolie would've sworn off romances with taken costars after her experience with Thornton, but in 2004, she met Brad Pitt — who was married to Friends icon Jennifer Aniston — on the set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Rumors immediately swirled about an on-set affair, but Jolie and Pitt denied them, insisting they were just costars who got along well. Hmmm. However, just months after Pitt and Aniston announced their separation in January 2005 after five years of marriage, Pitt and Jolie were filmed on a beach in Kenya with Maddox, her adopted son. The stars, of course, would marry and have six kids together. Did Aniston buy Pitt's claim that he didn't cheat on her before they separated? "I choose to believe my husband," she told Vanity Fair at the time. "At this point, I wouldn't be surprised by anything, but I would much rather choose to believe him."
Aniston's Friends costar and IRL pal Courteney Cox also told Vanity Fair, "I don't think he started an affair physically, but I think he was attracted to her. There was a connection, and he was honest about that with Jen. Most of the time, when people are attracted to other people, they don't tell. At least he was honest about it. It was an attraction that he fought for a period of time."
Pitt and Jolie were together for over a decade, but divorced just two years after tying the knot following a dramatic airplane incident where Jolie alleged that an inebriated Pitt physically accosted her and the children. Pitt, for his part, denies he got physical with his family. Regardless, the marriage was over.
In 2002, The Devil Wears Prada star Stanley Tucci costarred with Edie Falco (you know, from The Sopranos) on Broadway in the play Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune which required them to be naked onstage, portraying people who had just had a sexual encounter. But the nudity, it seems, didn't stay onstage. Rumors grew that the stars were having a real-life affair, and soon after, Tucci separated from Kate Spath, his wife since 1995, with whom he shared three children.
Whatever was going on with Tucci and Falco didn't last, though, and Tucci reconciled with his wife. Falco later addressed the affair with the New York Times, saying, "We were together and then we broke up. Because there's no way for that to be a good thing. He's a lovely man, and he's back with his wife and kids, and I'm thrilled." Other than that, neither Tucci nor Falco has spoken about their affair. Sadly, Spath died of breast cancer in 2009 at age 47.
In 2003, Billy Crudup — the star of Almost Famous and The Morning Show — was eight years into a relationship with Mary-Louise Parker (you know, from Weeds), who was pregnant with their first child. But when the 35-year-old actor stepped onto the set of Stage Beauty and met his 24-year-old costar Claire Danes, well, by now so you know what happened. Soon Crudup left his seven-month pregnant partner, and Danes, for good measure, left her boyfriend, Australian musician Ben Lee.
As you can imagine, Crudup's leaving a woman pregnant with his child for a much younger woman wasn't popular, and both Crudup and Danes took a lot of hits in the public eye. In a 2015 Howard Stern interview, Danes addressed the scandal, saying, 'I was just in love with him and needed to explore that, and I was 24... I didn't quite know what those consequences would be... But it's OK...I went through it.' Crudup, meanwhile, was asked to comment about the gossip in a 2004 New York Times interview. He wrote to the reporter: "First and foremost, it is personal, painful and involves an infant, and does not deserve to be exploited to sate the appetites of circulation counters and bored readers. I have never indulged our society's misguided notion that my personal life is relevant to my work, so any reporting surrounding that is necessarily hearsay, speculation or fantasy. Each published report is based only on the trade of suffering."
Crudup and Danes broke up in 2006, and Danes met her now husband Hugh Dancy that same year. She and Dancy have been together for 19 years and have three children. Crudup is also now in a long-term relationship, married to actor Naomi Watts, whom he met in 2016.
And if you're wondering about Mary-Louise Parker, she has maintained a dignified silence on the experience for the sake of her son, William (yes, named after Billy), who is now 21 and a filmmaker. She added a second child to her family in 2007, adopting a baby girl, Caroline.
And lastly, let's go back in time for one of the most infamous Hollywood scandals ever. In the early 1960s, 20th Century Fox set out to make Cleopatra, a lavish historical epic starring Elizabeth Taylor as the Egyptian queen. If you've heard about it today, it's likely because it was a runaway production that ended up the most expensive movie ever made at the time, costing the equivalent of nearly $500 million today. But what really blew up wasn't the budget — it was the affair that exploded on set. When shooting began in Rome, Taylor was married to singer Eddie Fisher, and her costar, Richard Burton, who played Mark Antony, was married to actor Sybil Williams. The two had CHEMISTRY playing onscreen lovers, and according to director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, the chemistry wasn't just for the cameras. He reportedly warned producer Walter Wanger: "Liz and Burton are not just playing Antony and Cleopatra."
By spring 1962, the tabloids smelled blood in the water, and confirmed the rumored romance when paparazzi (yes, they were causing trouble back then, too!) photographed Taylor and Burton canoodling on a yacht off the coast of Ischia. Both marriages fell apart in short time. Sybil Williams filed for divorce, citing "abandonment and cruel and inhumane treatment." And Fisher, who had infamously left his wife Debbie Reynolds for Taylor just a few years earlier, got to see what it felt like. (Side note: Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds were the parents of Carrie Fisher, aka Princess Leia.)Taylor and Burton went on to marry in 1964, divorce in 1974, remarry in 1975 (!!!), and finally called it quits for good in 1976. Taylor once said about their relationship: "When you are in love and lust like that… you just grab it with both hands and ride out the storm." Well, OK then.