There are three people in a Hollywood marriage: the husband, the wife – and everyone else. no wonder it usually ends in tears, says Bee Wilson
Can any Hollywood marriage last? Last year, like every year since celluloid began, had its fair share of ’shocking’ movie-star break-ups. Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe, long touted as a relatively normal couple by LA standards, split up after seven years of marriage and two children.
So did Kate Hudson and Chris Robinson (six years and one child), and Hilary Swank and Chad Lowe (eight years, several parrots and a Karu dog).
The weird thing about these broken unions is not so much that they don’t last as that we ever expected them to in the first place. As Valentine’s Day approaches, it seems a good time to question our continuing desire to see movie-star relationships as in any sense ideal. Ever since the tempestuous coupling of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in the 1960s, the most glamorous and feted duos have also been the most rocky.
First, you have the ‘fairytale romance’ and the ‘dream wedding’, which will either be obscenely grand or surprisingly low-key. Either way, the glossies will soon be talking up the couple du jour as ‘down to earth’ and ‘very much in love’.
We will be drip-fed small details of their everyday life – how they love to sip soymilk chai lattes together or go bungee jumping; how he adores Kiehl’s moisturiser and how she loves walking the dog; how they plan to move to a ranch in Australia, or Texas. But Hollywood is where they stay.
Then the rumours start. One of the couple, it will be said, can’t handle the other’s success. They said this for years of Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe, as she soared to rom-com royalty, while he was just ‘that guy who acted once in the teen version of Dangerous Liaisons with Sarah Michelle Gellar’. All rumours – of affairs, bisexuality or career meltdown – will be vigorously denied.
Read more at the Telegraph.co.uk
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