11 Celebrities Whose Partners Literally Couldn’t Stand Them Being Famous

Making a marriage work in Hollywood requires sacrifice and selflessness. For example, Jeff Daniels, who’s been married to his childhood sweetheart, Kathleen Treado, since 1979, moved back home to Michigan in 1986 because losing his wife and family was his “worst-case scenario.”

However, not every celebrity couple is built to withstand the pressures of the spotlight. Sometimes, career envy comes between a couple, or the spotlight simply becomes too much. Here are 11 celeb couples who were torn apart by fame:

1. Anna Faris and Ben Indra met while filming the 2000 slasher Lovers Lane. She rejected his first proposal but agreed to marry him the second time he asked. They got married in 2004, separated in 2007, and finalized their divorce in 2008. Anna later told Marie Claire that his acting career cooled off while hers was on the rise. She said, “That kind of destroyed my marriage. The divide became too great.”

2. Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke fell in love on the set of Gattaca in 1997 and tied the knot a year later. They welcomed two children, Maya and Levon, and then they divorced in 2005. After they split, Ethan shut down rumors that he had an affair while he was away filming in Canada, telling 20/20, “Uma and I did not split up over anybody’s infidelity. We had a lot of problems before I ever went to Montreal.”

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However, he linked the split to their successful careers, adding, “You know you’d come up with these rules: ‘One person works, the other person doesn’t.’ Well, then somebody’s always out of town… ‘Okay, we’ll all go away together.’ All right, great. Then I’m living in a hotel room, taking care of my kids, while you’re off on a film set six hours a day doing what you love. Do that for nine months and see what a good mood you’re in. It is very difficult for any couple who are married if both people are very ambitious… And our love got beaten up. I don’t know if it’s just too hard to be married to a woman that wants to be a movie star. I know that she has that right to want that.”

3. Lady Gaga and Chicago Fire actor Taylor Kinney fell in love after he costarred in her “Yoü and I” music video in 2011. They got engaged on Valentine’s Day in 2015, but a little over a year later, they announced their breakup. On Instagram, she said, “Taylor and I have always believed we are soulmates. Just like all couples we have ups and downs, and we have been taking a break. We are both ambitious artists, hoping to work through long-distance and complicated schedules to continue the simple love we have always shared. Please root us on. We’re just like everybody else and we really love each other.”

Then, in her 2017 documentary Gaga: Five Foot Two, Lady Gaga seemingly implied that her immense success contributed to the demise of several relationships, including her engagement to Taylor. She said, “My love life has just imploded. I sold 10 million [records] and lost Matt [Williams]. I sold 30 million and lost Lüc [Carl]. I did a movie [A Star Is Born] and lose Taylor. It’s like a turnover. This is the third time I’ve had my heart broken like this.”

4. Halle Berry proposed to former MLB player David Justice five months into their relationship in 1992. They got married on New Year’s Day but divorced in 1997. Nearly three decades later, he told the podcast All the Smoke, “I didn’t really have any personal stuff [in the media] until Halle and I got together. Of course, that was a lot of focus, because, back in them times, I can’t think — other than Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe — I can’t think of anybody before that was us. I can’t think of no one. And then Halle coming up, young and being hot and just trying to make her career, and you got me. It really wasn’t a lot of negative attention until I decided to leave her in 1996…”

He continued, “We spent a lot of time apart because she was doing movies in this country, that country. And we honestly probably could have made it if I knew about therapy. If we knew about therapy, we probably could have made it. We never had any major issues like that. It’s just…because I was young and had only been in, honestly, one real relationship before her. My knowledge and my understanding, my wisdom around relationships just wasn’t vast. So, I’m looking at my mom — and I’m a Midwest guy. So, in my mind, I’m thinking a wife, at that time, should cook, clean, you know? Then I’m thinking, ‘OK, if we have kids, is this the woman I want to have kids with and build a family with?’ At that time, as a young guy — she don’t cook, don’t clean, don’t really seem, like, motherly, and then we start having issues.”

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David unsurprisingly faced a lot of backlash for his comments. Halle seemingly responded in the most iconic way possible, sharing a picture of herself and her partner, Van Hunt, relaxing in bed together, unbothered and effortlessly beautiful. She captioned it, “Phew…! cooking, cleaning and mothering.”

5. In 1998, Jennifer Garner guest-starred as Scott Foley’s girlfriend on Felicity. Soon after, she became his girlfriend IRL. They got married in 2000, but three years later, they separated the same day she walked the Oscars red carpet. Their divorce was finalized a year later. She reportedly told InStyle, “That sounds cliché, but we really were victims of Hollywood. Everything is speeded up here — it is a fast-lane life, and if something is not working, it is considered best to end it without much thought. If we lived where I was brought up [West Virginia], we would probably still be together.”

In 2003, Scott told TV Guide, “Nobody else was involved. Jennifer became a huge celebrity. She became a huge star, and she deserved everything she got. There was no other relationship, there was no infidelity, nothing. People get divorced, you know? Through no one’s fault and everyone’s fault.”

6. When Kate Winslet met third assistant director Jim Threapleton on the set of Hideous Kinky, she didn’t believe in marriage, but she ultimately felt it was “something that had to happen between” them. They were married from 1998 to 2001 and welcomed one daughter, Mia. In 2004, Kate told Index magazine, “In the last year and a half of our marriage, I became a completely different person. I was isolated from my family and my friends. That was the period when I chose projects like Quills... I started looking for supporting roles because Jim didn’t want me to be famous. He would read a script and immediately kill my passion for it by saying it wasn’t good enough for me. That was the only time that I’ve ever lost control of my instincts.”

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In a 2007 profile that referred to him as “the former Mr. Winslet,” Jim told the Guardian, “I never sought any platform or media engagement, and by virtue of my silence, a picture was painted of my existence that was wholly inaccurate. But I felt no need to search out the opportunity to wave any particular flag. … I didn’t consider myself in any way well known, and I remember as we were sort of separating, being stopped on the Tube and asked for my autograph, which was a peculiar incident because I couldn’t quite understand under what terms someone would want the signature of someone who hasn’t got a canon of work to their name.”

7. Jim Carrey met Melissa Womer at the Comedy Store, where he performed as an up-and-coming comedian, and she waited tables. They knew each other for two years before they started dating, and they eventually got married in 1987. They welcomed a daughter, Jane, but they separated in 1993 and finalized their divorce two years later. In 1995, he told Rolling Stone, “All these things come up – like, well, he went Hollywood, and he left his wife, and **** like that. Well, it wasn’t about that, you know, it was ******* everything was up in the air. Everything. You know, how the hell did I know that Ace Ventura was going to be a hit? I didn’t.”

In the same article, Melissa alleged that, after getting home from the Ace Ventura set, he couldn’t handle normal, domestic life. She said, “[I told him,] ‘You must come home and put your feet back on the ground and take your garbage out like everyone else, or I can’t be married to you.’ And basically, he called my bluff. … I have my problems. The day he first walked on that set as Mr. Carrey, he decided he wanted to enjoy success from the perspective of a single man.”

8. Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey first crossed paths at the Hollywood Christmas Parade in 1998. He spent the whole night looking for her, but, despite sharing a manager at the time, they didn’t meet again until they were both at a Teen People party in Florida a month later. Their relationship blossomed from there, but they broke up in 2001. However, the tragic events of 9/11 made Jessica realize she “never, ever wanted to be away from Nick ever for the rest of [her] life,” and they got married the following year. They went on to star on the reality show Newlyweds, but they announced their separation in 2005. Their divorce was finalized in 2006.

In her 2020 memoir Open Book, Jessica wrote, “He was my first love. Nick loved the fact I was so strong in my faith and that I had this wide-eyed, innocent approach to life. … We were young and pioneering our way through reality television, always mic’d and always on. We worked, and we were great at it, but when it came time to being alone, we weren’t great at it anymore. We really got crushed by the media and by ourselves. I couldn’t lie to our fans, and I couldn’t give somebody hope that we were this perfect golden couple. I respect Nick very much. I was really young, and my success hadn’t really begun. He knew me as this young, innocent 18-year-old that had never been introduced to the world in so many ways. I went straight from my father to him. Nick’s very smart. He was eight years older than me, but he was also young.”

She also told Entertainment Tonight, “He’s also eight years older than me, so he was already so grown up when I wasn’t, so once I started to, you know, get covers and get endorsement deals that were separate from him — ’cause we did everything together — there was a little bit of tension. And, like, a lot less support. And I just felt in our marriage that we really were kind of spinning and trying to tolerate each other towards the end because we were so used to being mic’d up or onstage or, you know, the world took us in so many ways, and they put us as a trophy couple that we actually weren’t. I mean, we were at the beginning, but it fell out pretty quick.”

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9. Teyana Taylor and former NBA player Iman Shumpert met at a party in NYC in 2011, but she was dating someone else at the time. They saw each other around town, and, after she helped him recover from knee surgery in 2013, they became a couple. They got engaged and welcomed their first daughter together two years later. They married in 2016, welcomed their second daughter in 2020, and then filed for divorce in 2023.

TMZ leaked the news of their divorce nine months after Teyana quietly filed. The outlet reported that, according to legal documents, she allegedly accused him of being envious of how famous she was and insecure about not feeling “good enough” in the relationship. She allegedly said that she “began to intentionally dim her light for her husband to try to have a harmonious and peaceful marriage.” In an Instagram story post, Teyana said, “I mind my business, don’t bother nobody & y’all know I’ve never played about my children, family & our privacy. I have not spoken on this private matter to any media outlets or blogs etc.”

10. Jamie Dornan and Keira Knightley started dating after meeting at a photoshoot for their Asprey campaign in 2003. They broke up two years later, with his reps telling People, “Keira and Jamie have decided to call a halt to their relationship in its current phase, but they remain completely committed to each other as friends and will continue to see each other in this capacity.”

He reportedly later told the Mail on Sunday, “There is a big pressure when you go out with someone like Keira. You can feel a bit second-rate, and that’s what started to happen. It’s not like I was bringing the bread to the table – and that can start to affect everything. … The man is meant to be the Alpha in the relationship on the money and power front, and clearly, I was not. You feel you have to be dominant in other areas, and that leads to problems.” However, in 2015, he addressed his past controversial comments, telling the Evening Standard, “That was taken totally out of context. I didn’t mean that.”

11. Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn went public with their relationship in May 2017, though fans speculated they first crossed paths at the 2016 Met Gala. They were notoriously protective of their privacy until breaking up in 2023. At the time, a source told People, “They had plenty in common and fell in love in a safe bubble while she was retreating from the world during Reputation. Then the pandemic hit, and they were locked down together and able to continue growing their relationship in this insulated way. But he didn’t really ‘know’ her yet outside of that bubble. … Joe has struggled with Taylor’s level of fame and the attention from the public.”

A year later, Joe told the Sunday Times, “I would hope that anyone and everyone can empathize and understand the difficulties that come with the end of a long, loving, fully committed relationship of over six and a half years. That is a hard thing to navigate. What is unusual and abnormal in this situation is that, one week later, it’s suddenly in the public domain, and the outside world is able to weigh in. So you have something very real suddenly thrown into a very unreal space: tabloids, social media, press, where it is then dissected, speculated on, pulled out of shape beyond recognition. And the truth is, to that last point, there is always going to be a gap between what is known and what is said. I have made my peace with that.”

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