If there’s two things constant in Hollywood, it’s drama and divorces. There’s almost always one celebrity divorce that makes it to the tabloids every month. Calling quits on a marriage is tough for anyone but imagine doing so with the whole world watching. Here we’ve rounded up the five biggest, most public breakups of the 2000s.
Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise
From a whirlwind love affair to a very ugly breakup, Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise’s love story always made the Hollywood headlines. Even before meeting Cruise in April of 2005, Holmes had on many previous occasions admitted having a childhood crush on the Mission Impossible star. Just one month after their introduction, Cruise declares falling madly in love with Holmes in a now-infamous episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show. The couple gets engaged a month later in Paris and announced that they were expecting a child four months later. The family makes their first magazine cover in Vanity Fair in October 2006 with a 22-page spread of the couple and baby Suri.
The Cruises get married in a lavish Italian wedding in November 2006. In June of 2012, Holmes tells his husband her decision to file a divorce through a phone call witnessed by the Mission Impossible crew. It ended as quickly as it started. Just 11 days following the announcement, the couple had reached a divorce settlement.
Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries
Speaking of whirlwind romances, Kim Kardashian’s 72-day wedding to Kris Humphries will forever be etched in Hollywood history. The reality star revealed later on that she knew as soon as their honeymoon that the NBA player was not her Mr Right. The reportedly $10 million wedding and its demise became the most watched episodes in all of Keeping Up with the Kardashians’ history, attracting an estimated 10.5 million strong viewership.
Kardashian shares in a KUWTK episode that it was her desire to marry before 30 and have babies that led her to rush into marriage too soon. Although the marriage all took but three months, the divorce dragged on for two years. Kardashian was pregnant with her first child with Kanye West when her marriage with Humphries was finally dissolved.
Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan
After meeting on the set of their hit dance movie Step Up, actors Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan started dating in 2005. Tatum admits that he wasn’t looking for anything serious at the time but things worked out for the dancing duo. The couple tied the knot in a beautiful Malibu wedding in 2009. After four years of marital bliss, they welcomed their daughter Everly Tatum to the world.
Fans tag the Tatums as the perfect Instagram couple for their sweet snaps and captions that painted a crazy-in-love, perfect marriage. It came as a shock to their followers when the couple announced their split through the same platform in April of 2018. The couple declined to detail the breakup but maintains that there are no secrets nor salacious events at the root of the separation.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
No list of famous divorces is ever complete without Brangelina. From reel to real, the Mr and Mrs Smith co-actors garnered a lot of public hate in their early days for breaking up Brad Pitt’s marriage with America’s sweetheart Jennifer Anniston. Pitt and Angelina Jolie initially decided to keep the relationship low-key but paparazzi photographs fueled rumors about their romantic status. In October of 2005 just months after the Pitt-Anniston split, it was revealed that Pitt has filed a petition to legally adopt Jolie’s adopted kids Maddox and Zahara.
Brangelina was blessed with a total of six children - half of which were adopted and the other half being their biological kids. They had a secret wedding in France in August of 2014 after being together for nearly 9 years. After two years of marriage, Jolie filed for a divorce citing irreconcilable differences.
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner
Falling in love in the set of Daredevil in 2002, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner were with different partners at the time. After Affleck called off his engagement with Jennifer Lopez and Garner divorced her ex-husband Scott Foley, the two found their way back to each other and got married in 2005. The couple shares three children together and public appearances seemed to paint the perfect family life. They surprised the media when they announced a split after 10 years of marriage in 2016. Many rumors broke out following the separation of a well-loved celebrity couple, but none were ever confirmed. Affleck and Garner remain as friendly co-parents.
Divorce lawyers in Los Angeles know that Hollywood is a place of fleeting marriages. With busy schedules, almost non-stop travelling, a high-stress lifestyle, and constant public scrutiny, living life in the spotlight certainly has its marital disadvantages. Better keep crossing your fingers for your favorite Hollywood couples!
