Brangelina split: Five other Hollywood power couples

Like legendary Hollywood couples before them including Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, love blossomed on set, the actors falling for each other in 2004 while filming "Mr and Mrs Smith" - a movie about marriage.

By AFP

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Published: Wed 21 Sep 2016, 6:36 AM

Last updated: Thu 2 Nov 2023, 10:32 AM

As Angelina Jolie files for divorce from Brad Pitt, here's a look at some of the other off-screen Hollywood romances that have kept audiences enthralled:

Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart


The sultry Bacall made her debut aged just 19 opposite Bogart, 44, in "To Have and Have Not" in 1944. They got married a year later; the age gap did not stop them from becoming one of Hollywood's most mythical couples.

Bacall cemented her status as a film noir icon with appearances alongside Bogart in "The Big Sleep" (1946), "Dark Passage" (1947), and "Key Largo" in 1948. They were married until Bogart's death from cancer in 1957.


Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton

Taylor and Burton's famously turbulent romance began in 1963 when the pair were filming "Cleopatra", she in the title role and he as her Mark Antony.

Both were married to other people at the time but their instant chemistry was plain to see. They were married twice: for ten years from 1964, and another year from 1975-76.

AP Photo: Burton courts Taylor with a flower at one of their many work functions, 1963.

Both unions were marred by alcoholism and furious arguments, though they remained close into their later years.

They starred in eleven films together, including "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966) and "The Taming of the Shrew" (1967).

Demi Moore and Bruce Willis

Married for more than a decade from 1987, Moore and Willis were one of the most prominent Hollywood power couples of the late 80s and early 90s.

Both blamed the collapse of their relationship on not having enough time together as their careers took off, with Moore the best-paid actress in Hollywood by 1990 and Willis working on the "Die Hard" series.

They remained friends after their split, even spending holidays together to give stability to their three daughters.

Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman

The pair met on the set of "Days of Thunder", a high-adrenaline racing movie starring Cruise as an ambitious young driver and Kidman as his neurosurgeon love interest. It was released in 1990; they were married by the end of the year.

"I was a baby when I married Tom, but I don't regret any of it," Kidman later said. The couple adopted two children and starred in two other films together - "Far and Away" and "Eyes Wide Shut" - but divorced in 2001.

Cruise later married actress Katie Holmes, gaining the celebrity moniker "TomKat". Their six-year relationship, ending in 2012, was heavily scrutinised by the press, largely because of Cruise's growing involvement in the Church of Scientology.

Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz

Spanish actress Cruz - another former lover of Tom Cruise - began dating her Oscar-winning "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" co-star Bardem in 2007.

Married in 2010, the couple have two children together and are fiercely private.

They sparked a Hollywood row in 2014 when they signed an open letter blasting Israel's bombardment of Gaza.

But both released follow-up statements clarifying their comments, amid rumours that Israel-supporting Hollywood executives were furious over the move.


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