Celebs Who Surprised Us By Divorcing After We All Thought They'd Made It

Celebrity relationships are not known for their longevity, but there are stars who have managed to make their partnerships work for 10, 20, even 40 or more years. Many, but not all (shoutout to you, Goldie and Kurt!) of these couples are married, and together they prove that a long marriage is possible in Hollywood as long as it is between the right people and given the proper nourishment. There is no key point in a marriage when a couple "makes it," but there is a feeling that fans get when a couple has been together a while and appears to be thriving. Even though we never know what happens behind closed doors, certain couples just feel like they are meant to be — like Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, or Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, or Beyonce and Jay-Z.

Occasionally, a couple that we assumed to be on solid footing calls it quits, shocking and devastating fans in the process. A 2023 Refinery29 article suggests that we react so strongly to celebrity breakups because fans look to these couples as stable examples of love (#relationshipgoals) and feel connected to the unit as a whole as much as the individuals within the unit. It is also not uncommon for fans to develop parasocial relationships with celebrities — one-way relationships that very much mimic the feelings of friendship — which would explain why we feel bad when our favorite celebs split. Here are 20 celebrity couples who truly surprised us by divorcing when we thought they were endgame.

We love Bennifer as much as the next person, but we were okay about closing that chapter when Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez broke up way back in January 2004. Decades later, we are digging them again, but only after years mourning the breakup between Affleck and his first wife, Jennifer Garner. After all, it is Garner whose patience and support helped Affleck become his best self, and even after their 2015 split, she has continued to stand by her ex. For example, when Affleck went to rehab in August 2018, two months before the divorce was finalized, it was Garner who drove him to the treatment center. Their split was especially startling since it happened only days after they celebrated their 10-year wedding anniversary (although divorce papers were not filed for a couple of years after that, in April 2017).

The couple first met on the set of "Pearl Harbor," in which Affleck starred and Garner had a tiny role, but nothing happened between them since Garner was married to "Scandal" actor Scott Foley at the time. Nothing happened when they co-starred together again three years later, in 2003's "Daredevil," but once they were single the next year, things were on. They made their first public appearance in late 2004, married in June 2005, and had their first child Violet six months later. They welcomed two more children — Seraphina in 2009 and Samuel in 2012 — and established themselves as a Hollywood power couple before it all went to shreds.

Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen were a weird couple, but a weird couple that seemed to work well as a duo. Their pairing always made sense, since athletes and models pair up as often as macaroni and cheese, but the more we learned about their life, the more they seemed perfect for each other. They even abided by the same overly restrictive diet, which consisted of 80% vegetables and banned white sugar, flour, dairy, and even nightshades (per Boston.com). We assumed that Brady and Bundchen were going to be together forever, especially after the model stuck by her man during the Deflategate scandal. But you know what they say about those who assume.

Brady and Bundchen's marriage began under difficult circumstances, when Brady found out that his ex-girlfriend Bridget Moynahan was pregnant with his oldest son, Jack, two months after starting his romance with Bundchen (in December 2006). Somehow, the relationship was able to survive and Bundchen welcome Jack into her life and family. The couple got engaged in January 2009 and married the next month in a small ceremony with only their parents present. Bundchen gave birth to the couple's son Benjamin in December of that same year, and to their daughter Vivian three years later. Though they faced rumors about fighting or tension throughout the years, they were also consistently photographed being handsy and never shied away from Instagram tributes to each other, so we were truly surprised by their split, which they formally announced in October 2022 after their divorced was finalized.

"Modern Family" star Sofía Vergara and everyone's favorite "True Blood" werewolf Joe Manganiello made a beautiful couple, and their intense sexual chemistry was palpable whenever they were appeared together in public. Like so many fans, we were rooting for them to succeed, and the July 2023 announcement of their split left us truly shaken. After seven years of marriage, the couple ended things after reportedly growing apart over time. "As two people that love and care for one another very much, we politely ask for respect of our privacy at this time as we navigate this new phase of our lives," read their joint statement, released to Page Six.

Plenty of rumors have swirled since the gorgeous pair announced their news, most of them surrounding children. Page Six claims that Manganiello desperately wanted children, but that Vergara had become closed off to the idea in the years since they married. Vergara has a grown son, Manolo, from her first marriage, and famously fought with ex-fiancé Nick Loeb over frozen embryos he wanted to implant in a surrogate after their breakup. She won her case again Loeb, but perhaps the experience soured her on the prospect of having another baby at this stage of life (Vergara looks 40, but is actually 51). So many fans posted reactions to Vergara and Manganiello's divorce news that Sportskeeda even created an article of the collected outpouring. If two incredibly, almost inhumanly attractive people can't make it in this world, who can?

Many children of the 1990s still think of Tia and Tamera Mowry as the teenage twins separated at birth they played on "Sister, Sister," so the idea that the sisters are not only grown but have kids approaching the age of their famous characters is almost mindboggling. While Tamera (who now goes by Mowry-Housley) is still happily married to Adam Housley, Tia's run at love has taken a turn for the left in recent years. In 2022, Mowry surprised us all when she split from actor Cory Hardrict, her husband of 14 years. 

One reason the split was so shocking was because Hardrict was the only man Mowry had ever been linked to publicly, and she had spent nearly her whole adult life with him. The pair first started dating in 2000, after meeting on the set of "Hollywood Horror," a forgettable film that was not even released until 2005. Mowry was 22 when they met, and just about to turn 30 when they walked down the aisle in April 2008. They welcomed son Cree in 2011 and daughter Cairo in 2018, showing no signs of marital distress, not even leading up to their split. In April 2022, Mowry praised her man on Instagram to celebrate their 22nd anniversary, while Hardict posted a birthday tribute for his wife that July. So, when Mowry announced their split in October, it was certainly unexpected. "I wanted to share that Cory and I have decided to go our separate ways," she posted on Instagram, one day after filing divorce papers.

Academy Award-nominated actor Laurence Fishburne is a fantastic performer who has dazzled in everything from "What's Love Got to Do with It?" to "The Matrix" to "Black-ish," where he played the Johnson family's live-in grandpa Earl in a recurring capacity for years. One role Fishburne has not mastered is husband, even though he gave it a solid run a couple of times. We were particularly saddened to see his marriage to fellow actor Gina Torres come to an end in 2018, as we were hoping the second time would be the charm for Fishburne. He was previously married to former actor Hajna O. Moss, with whom he shares two adult children.

But back to "9-1-1: Lone Star" actor Torres, who Fishburne married in 2002. The couple went on to have one child, daughter Delilah, and it was not until Page Six published photos of Torres smooching a strange man in 2017 that we knew there was trouble in paradise. "With heavy hearts, Laurence and I quietly separated and began the dissolution of our marriage in the early fall of last year," Torres told Us Weekly the day after Page Six ran the photos. "There are no bad guys here. Only a love story with a different ending than either one of us had expected." In 2022, Fishburne told Page Six that he was not actively dating despite being open to falling in love again. Torres is still smooching Kevin Wright, the man from those 2018 photos, judging from a June 2023 Instagram reel she made.

Peter Facinelli and Jennie Garth made it over a decade as a married couple, which is a real feat in Hollywood. Still, we had hopes that they could make things last until death do them part and were surprised when they split in 2012. "While we have decided to end our marriage, we both share the same deep love and devotion to our children," they said in a statement at the time (via the New York Daily News). "We remain dedicated to raising our beautiful daughters together. We ask for privacy and respect during this time." The couple finalized their divorce the following year and Garth married her third husband (Facinelli was number two) in 2015. Facinelli has also found new love and welcomed a son with his fiancée Lily Anne Harrison in September 2022.

We do not know for sure what ended things between Facinelli and Garth, but Us Weekly reported that Garth had grown resentful of Facinelli's success, which exploded with the "Twilight" movies. When asked about the divorce many years later, Facinelli simply said that things changed in the relationship over time. "So, bad things can become habitual, the way you start to treat each other, giving the other person permission or an allowance to talk to you in a certain way," he explained on the "Allison Interviews" podcast in 2022. Facinelli and Garth first met on the set of a TV movie in 1995, and they married in early 2001. They have three daughters — Luca, Lola, and Fiona.

Some of our favorite marriages are ones where both partners are absolutely hilarious, as we imagine they live in wedded bliss in homes filled only with laughter and fun. This is obviously far from the reality of any marriage, even ones between comedians', but that has not stopped us from investing deeply in the pairings of people like Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone, Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman, or Chelsea Peretti and Jordan Peele. It was a sad, sad day when Amy Poehler and Will Arnett, two of the funniest people working in Hollywood and a seemingly perfect couple, announced their impending divorce. Isn't laughter supposed to be the best medicine? We guess there are some tears jokes cannot fix.

According to People, Poehler and Arnett first crossed paths in the 1996, but it was not until a reintroduction in 2000 that they began dating. Things got hot and heavy quickly after that, but the pair kept things private and did not even make a public appearance until 2002, which is a year before they wed. They welcomed son Archie in 2008 and his brother Abel in 2010, and no signs of discord ever appeared in gossip columns. While the couple's September 2012 divorce announcement broke our hearts, we are comforted by their consistent reassurance that they remain on good terms. "I'm so lucky that we're such a huge part of each other's lives, even more so than we were five years ago," Arnett told The Guardian in 2022.

Ali Wong made a ton of jokes about her marriage and her husband, Justin Hakuta, in her third Netflix special, "Don Wong," but we did not think anything of it. She had always joked about marriage and we can hardly name a married comedian who doesn't include their spouse in their act. But then, two months after the special came out in February 2022, Wong and Hakuta announced their split — so it is very likely the jokes were symbolic of something deeper. Wong is back on the road on a comedy tour as of summer 2023, and her divorce (and single life post-divorce) is the main topic of discussion. At least she got some good material out of the dissolution of her marriage, right?

Wong first met Hakuta at a wedding in 2010, and the pair got married four years later at City Hall. Hakuta's family hilarious made Wong sign a prenup — hilarious because the comedian and actor is at the height of her career between comedy and her Emmy-nominated performance in the miniseries "Beef," and is now worth a reported $4 million (per Celebrity Net Worth). If you have seen Wong's first two Netflix specials, both of them filmed when she was heavily pregnant, then you already know that she and Hakuta have two children (born in 2015 and 2017). Despite their divorce, Wong still spend tons of time with her ex, he is still working as her tour manager, and she called him her "best friend" in a 2023 profile in The Hollywood Reporter.

"Dirty Dancing" star Jennifer Grey's career had largely petered out by the time she got married in 2001, but she was still the bigger name in her relationship. That changed along the way as hubby Clark Gregg started scoring higher profile roles, and the actor is now relatively well known due to his role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Gregg surely racked up some dough playing Agent Phil Coulson in the first six seasons of the series "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.," as well as a variety of Marvel movies beginning with 2008's "Iron Man." But while Gregg's career was rising, his marriage to Gregg was apparently flailing and the two called it quits one year before their 20th wedding anniversary.

"After 19 years together, we separated in January, knowing we'd always be a family who loves, values and cares for each other," posted both Gray and Gregg on their Instagram accounts in July 2020 (via People). "We recently made the difficult decision to divorce, but we remain close and are deeply grateful for the life we've shared and the wonderful daughter we've raised." Gray and Gregg first met in 2000, and they were expecting their daughter Stella when they walked down the aisle in 2001 in front of stars like Michael J. Fox and Felicity Huffman. The couple's divorce was finalized in 2021, and Gray was awarded half of all future residuals and royalties from Gregg's projects during their marriage — plus a smaller cut of any future earnings should he reprise his Marvel role in the future.

Bruce Willis and Demi Moore's marriage feels ancient now, but those of us old enough to remember when they were together know just how highly regarded their union was at the time. Willis and Moore were each Hollywood bigwigs on their own, so when you put them together, you had the definitive power couple. Everything they did was cool, too — from the odd names they gave their daughters to their move to the small town of Hailey, Idaho (well before it was trendy for celebrities to go off the grid). The couple's split was surprising and sad, but the pair set the template when it comes to remaining friends after divorce. They even quarantined together during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside their adult daughters, Willis's current wife Emma Heming, and his two daughters from that marriage.

Willis and Moore first met in July 1987, when Moore was engaged to actor Emilio Esteves. When that relationship ended weeks later, Willis swooped in and by November, the couple was married. They then had daughter Rumor in 1988, followed by Scout in 1991, and Tallulah in 1994. Both of their careers were at a high during this time period as well, with Willis doing his "Die Hard" thing and Moore fresh off a string of successful films including "Disclosure" and "Indecent Proposal." Cut to four years later, when we were rocked by the couple's divorce announcement, which they filed in Idaho. It took two years for the divorce to become finalized (in 2000), reportedly due to the size of their real estate portfolio and the intricacies of custody matters.