The Messiest Celebrity Affairs Of The 1980s

While it's not the 24/7, TikTok-infused, hot-take culture of today in terms of celebrity coverage, the 1980s had an expanding tabloid ecosystem uniquely its own. Without the smartphones and digital networks of today, celebrity scandals gained steam instead via grainy paparazzi snaps that were accompanied by snappy write-ups in gossip magazines, which were strategically displayed at grocery store checkouts and on newsstands. The stars of the day provided them with plenty of material, too (not unlike the modern crowd).

As ever, liaisons outside of established relationships were among the stories that made the largest waves in the 1980s, during which actors, musicians, and even members of the royal family were involved in shocking affairs. And the mythos surrounding some of these cheating scandals has only grown with all the information that has come out and the discussion that has surrounded them in the years since.

From a pair of Hollywood icons having children outside of their relationships to a bona fide rock god getting down with the nanny, here are some of the messiest celebrity affairs of the '80s.

One of Hollywood's most notorious power couples of the 1970s and '80s, Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Huston were an on-again, off-again item for the better part of two decades, from 1973 to 1990. In her second memoir, "Watch Me," Huston recalled her relationship with the screen icon; a winding saga filled with jealousy, grand gestures, and bad behavior, including Nicholson admiring other women in front of her and even welcoming their advances.

The problematic pairing was pushed beyond its limits, though, at the end of the '80s when Nicholson's affair with Rebecca Broussard, a woman who was 12 years younger than Huston, resulted in pregnancy (and, eventually, a daughter). Nicholson copped to the situation while Huston was in rehearsal for the Stephen Frears film, "The Grifters" — which started shooting in October 1989 — during a dinner at his home.

"I have something to tell you," Nicholson confessed at the end of the meal, according to Huston's memoir. "Someone is gonna have a baby." And, right away, Huston knew that the "someone" he was referring to was Broussard. Huston writes that she asked Nicholson if he planned to stand by her, and when he responded in the affirmative, she said, "There's only room for one of us women in this picture, and I am going to retire from it." Shortly thereafter, an article detailing Nicholson's liaison with a woman was printed in Playboy, prompting a physical altercation between the two stars, who ultimately broke it off.

By the time the late 1980s rolled around, Lionel Richie had long since transcended his role as the Commodores' frontman and reached the plane of veritable pop culture icons. He was one of the masterminds behind "We Are the World" and also topped charts with solo hits like "Endless Love," "All Night Long," "Hello," and more. Meanwhile, he and his college sweetheart, Brenda Harvey, were still married and raising Nicole Richie together.

Alas, their seemingly idyllic family life was irrevocably altered after the singer began a relationship with his future wife, Diane Alexander (who had appeared as a featured dancer in his "Dancing on the Ceiling" music video), in 1986. As Richie chronicled in his memoir, "Truly" (via People), after Harvey apparently suspected something was amiss, she followed Richie to Alexander's apartment in Beverly Hills and knocked on the door. They split in 1988, but the love triangle nonetheless returned to the headlines when Harvey and Alexander got into a physical altercation at the latter's home.

"When the door opens, Brenda is standing there," Richie wrote in his memoir. "There is a massive confrontation. Diane is in total shock and I'm trying to leave, to draw Brenda away. It's the most awful screaming match of life, and it's all in this small entryway." According to Richie, he left the scene hoping Brenda would follow him, but the confrontation resumed, resulting in a police presence and charges being filed. "The most painful part, the tragedy of our lives," Richie added, "was that Brenda was heartbroken. And I get it. Ladies and gentlemen, I get it."

The production of another Stephen Frears film would provide the backdrop for another infamous cheating scandal of the late 1980s. Specifically, the 1988 period drama "Dangerous Liaisons," an adaptation of the 1782 French novel "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" starring John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer. 

Both Malkovich and Pfeiffer were married at the time of the film's production — him to actor Glenne Headly and her to Peter Horton. In the movie, Malkovich played an evil aristocrat tapped to seduce and break the heart of a debutante, played by Pfeiffer, as part of a greater revenge plot. Their intense on-screen chemistry reportedly mirrored something happening between Malkovich and Pfeiffer behind the scenes. Details of the affair are difficult to come by (Pfeiffer has never acknowledged the situation publicly), but it coincided with the breakdown of both stars' marriages.

"It's not something I've ever really talked about," Malkovich said on Bella Freud's "Fashion Neurosis" podcast in 2025, further lamenting that their affair ruined their working relationship. "I think I've learned over the course of my life that a great colleague is actually rarer than anything. And when that relationship becomes more than collegial or more than a friendship, even a profound friendship, then, at least in my experience — and it might be my particular psychology or stupidity or ineptness or all of the above ... you lose a great colleague."

Until 2011, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver were in one of the longest-running celebrity marriages of the time. However, on May 17, 2011, it was revealed that the star of such films as "The Terminator" and "Kindergarten Cop" had fathered a child out of wedlock 14 years earlier with his family's former housekeeper, Mildred Patricia Baena. While Schwarzenegger's love life revelation erupted in scandal and culminated in divorce, it wasn't the first time he was unfaithful to Shriver.

Way back in 1985, while he was still dating Shriver and riding the "Terminator" wave, Schwarzenegger starred in the fantasy/sci-fi film "Red Sonja" alongside a debuting Brigitte Nielsen (who would become engaged to Sylvester Stallone later that year). Nielsen played the titular character in the film, while Schwarzenegger was the Conan stand-in Lord Kalidor. As the two showed off their physicality on the screen, things were apparently getting hot and heavy off-camera.

Nielsen opened up about the affair in 2011 amid Schwarzenegger's love child scandal, telling the Daily Mail, "Since we both knew that wouldn't last beyond the movie, we didn't hold back." Added Nielsen, "He never spoke about her — and the way he was living his life with me, I felt I was the only one. Then I realized about him and Maria and, wow, I felt cheated." Said Schwarzenegger of the relationship during a 2012 "60 Minutes" interview (via Entertainment Weekly): "I did feel bad about it ... But all of my different things — they were mistakes, and, you know, my failure. My screw-ups."

The infamous split of then-Prince Charles and Princess Diana — and the former's extramarital liaisons with Camilla Parker Bowles — were tabloid fodder on a worldwide scale during the mid-1990s. However, King Charles III and Queen Camilla's love dates back to the 1980s and beyond. According to Time, Charles and Camilla met at a polo match at Windsor Great Park in 1970 and started dating shortly thereafter. However, Charles was later pulled away by the Royal Navy and Camilla ultimately married Andrew Parker Bowles.

Fast-forward to 1981 and Charles wed Diana in what was billed as "the wedding of the century," and they went on to have two children together, Prince William and Prince Harry. However, his feelings for Camilla remained. As chronicled in Sally Bedell Smith's 2017 biography of the eventual monarch, "Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life," Charles seemingly copped to having rekindled his romance with Camilla some time in 1986 during a 1994 interview with biographer Jonathan Dimbleby.

In the 2025 biography "Rebel King," Tom Bower recounted a claim that Diana confronted the future queen when they were both at the same party in 1989. Eventually, Charles and Diana divorced, the world mourned Diana's tragic death in a 1997 automobile accident, and Charles and Camilla were married. But the winding saga managed to capture the imagination of the world along the way.

Like King Charles III and Queen Camilla, Sting's longtime partnership with actor/producer Trudie Styler began on a somewhat scandalous note. As recounted by Styler in The Guardian in 2002, she first laid eyes on the musician while he was still very much in his starving artist phase as the frontman of The Police — prior to the band's big break — in 1977. At the time, he was married with a young child to actor Frances Tomelty. By 1980, Styler and Tomelty had become friends, appearing together in a production of "Macbeth."

While the precise details are fuzzy, Sting and Styler ultimately began an affair. And, by 1983, she was pregnant with his baby and traveling with him as he toured the world and became one of the hottest rock stars of the decade (and all time). The two were eventually married, but Sting's characterization of her as his mistress at one point led to even less flattering coverage of her in the press, according to Styler.

These days, the couple's questionable beginnings have become an afterthought. "I think we have been accorded some sort of respect — we've just gone the distance. Twenty years of being together, in the sort of industry where marriages fail," Styler told The Guardian. "We've been around now for such a long time that we're sort of establishment. I think we've become thought of in affectionate terms." To this day, they're still going strong, even weathering storms like Sting getting scammed out of millions.

Another power couple with a decades-long history together, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson are essentially Hollywood royalty. However, their partnership's start wasn't exactly neat and tidy. As chronicled by People, Hanks and Wilson first met on the set of his ABC sitcom "Bosom Buddies" in 1981, when both actors were cutting their teeth as young stars. Wilson did a guest spot on an episode and instantly hit it off with Hanks, who was married to his college sweetheart, Samantha Lewes, at the time.

While their relationship was seemingly platonic at first, sparks apparently flew in 1985 when Hanks and Wilson starred in their first movie together — the Nicholas Meyer-directed "Volunteers." In a 2006 Esquire feature, Hanks noted that the film's exotic setting and the experience of connecting with Wilson, alongside legendary comedian John Candy, provided an ideal backdrop for falling in love with her, the problematic timeline notwithstanding.

"I did happen to be married at the time. And there's nothing to celebrate about that. But the reality is, it was a young marriage and a difficult marriage," Hanks told the outlet. "I had two kids, great kids. And I wasn't so naive not to think that there were going to be repercussions. But I knew what was and was not. I asked Rita if it was the real thing for her, and it just couldn't be denied." They were married in 1988 and remain together now.

In fairness, Rob Lowe's involvement with fellow actor Melissa Gilbert and the drama that arose over the course of their relationship wasn't his biggest story during the 1980s. His infamous 1988 tape scandal ignited firestorm of mainstream and tabloid coverage of the incident.

Before his headline-making moment, though, Lowe had been in a romantic relationship with Gilbert for six years, from 1981 to 1987, and their partnership was plagued by unfaithfulness. Lowe reportedly cheated on Gilbert with his "Hotel New Hampshire" co-star, Nastassja Kinski, and other famous women. Joan Rivers famously called him out live on "The Tonight Show" after spotting him out in public with another woman. Meanwhile, as the "Little House on the Prairie" star wrote in her memoir, "Prairie Tale," she eventually cheated on Lowe with his friend, John Cusack.

"I always thought that every girl and woman was my sister. We're sisters, but it was not evident at all when Rob and I were a couple," Gilbert told Jennie Garth on a 2025 episode of "I Choose Me." "It was like I didn't exist. They just pushed right past me and stick phone numbers in his pockets and stuff. ... It was hard and horrible. I think I learned a lot about what didn't work for me, actually, and what I wouldn't stand for later on."

Another legendary figure with one of the 1980s most memorable controversies to his credit — namely, the time he bit the head off of an actual bat while performing — Ozzy Osbourne was reportedly unfaithful to his wife, Sharon Osbourne, at various points during the '80s and '90s. In 2016, Sharon famously aired the dirty laundry on the Black Sabbath frontman cheating on her with multiple nannies when her children were young.

"You can't work a nanny seven days a week, so we had four nannies employed rotating. And I'm telling you they were the bane of my existence. They were all wanting to be celebrities. They were all wanting money," Sharon said on "The Talk" before dropping the bombshell (via Page Six). "I caught two of them in bed with Ozzy different times. And it goes on and on and on."

In an effort to prevent her husband from going astray again, she eventually took a different approach to securing childcare for her young family. "At the end of the day, I hired a nanny called Big Dave." Despite everything, the couple remained together until Ozzy Osbourne died in 2025.