Married Actors Who Cheated With Their Co-Star While Making A Movie

Between the long hours, tedious rehearsals, and constant presence of teams of camera people and others, film sets just don't seem like the most romantic places on Earth to us. However, in the following cases, some of Hollywood's most famous male players couldn't resist entering into a relationship with their female co-stars. Sure, acting is all about make-believe and convincing audiences that fiction is reality, but in certain cases the pull of romance promised by a movie script ultimately bled into the private lives of the people playing the parts. 

On top of all the potential complications of dating a co-worker, these actors had another big issue — they were already married to other people. It's drama that's the stuff of, well, Hollywood, and also that editors at the tabloid magazines and gossip sites basically live for. Read on to see which mega actors nearly, and in some cases completely, ruined their relationships by cheating with their co-star while making a movie.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's relationship may be over now, but in the early 2000s, it seemed like the only thing people could talk about. Initially, the couple vehemently denied that they had gotten together while filming Mr. and Mrs. Smith in 2004, despite compelling evidence to the contrary. The big problemo with their union? Pitt was still very much married to Friends star Jennifer Aniston when tabloids picked up on his affair with Jolie. 

As Glamour detailed, Aniston and Pitt split in January 2005. Pitt and Jolie went public with their relationship in April that year. Aniston's reaction pretty much sums it up: "The world was shocked, and I was shocked."

Jolie later acknowledged that her relationship with Pitt had indeed started on set, telling The New York Times in October 2008 how cool it would be to show the movie to her and Pitt's kids. Jolie said, "not a lot of people get to see a movie where their parents fell in love." Pitt also seemed to finally admit that there'd been action on the set in December the same year, when he remarked to Rolling Stone that he loved Mr & Mrs. Smith, "Because I fell in love."

In 2016, Mark Behar, a bodyguard who had worked on the film, also discussed the couple's on-set flirtation, telling Us Weekly, "[Angelina] and Brad were constantly laughing and flirting ... I caught them several times in each other's trailers making out."

Actor Eddie Cibrian made major headlines when his "met on the set of a film" love story with singer Leann Rimes was caught on camera. The pair were co-stars in a 2009 Lifetime movie called Northern Lights, and despite being married to other people (Cibrian to future The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills cast member Brandi Glanville and Rimes to backup dancer Dean Sheremet,) they just couldn't resist getting to know each other better during filming.

In March 2009, Us Weekly published stills from a security video that appeared to show the pair kissing and holding hands during what seemed to be a decidedly not professional dinner date in Laguna Beach. This all ended pretty happily for Cibrian and Rimes, but not for anyone else involved. Their marriages quickly dissolved, and the co-stars tied the knot in 2011. 

Weirdly, and a little creepily, Rimes later posted a photo on Instagram showing the couple's actual first meeting when Rimes was 14 years old and Cibrian was 23. She captioned the post, "We don't remember meeting. He found this in the garage while going through boxes. 14 years later who knew we'd meet again."

Cibrian's ex-wife has been especially vocal about her distaste for the entire situation. In August 2017, Glanville told the Daily Mail, "He's so dumb. I see him all the time. He makes my skin crawl."

Actor Richard Burton met the legendarily beautiful actress Elizabeth Taylor on the set of 1963's Cleopatra and commenced a torrid affair that would see them get married, get divorced, and get married again (it would also see Burton buying Taylor a ton of jewelry.) As Woman's Day describes it, the pair even had its very first kiss onscreen, continuing to make out after the director called "cut." 

When the couple met, Burton was, you guessed it, married to Sybil Burton, but he was reportedly more than happy to carry on a dalliance with Taylor, who left her then-husband Eddie Fisher (father of Carrie Fisher) to dive in with Burton. That's two marriages destroyed in one fell swoop.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Burton and Taylor's life together didn't exactly calm down after the affair was out in the open. They wed in 1964, divorced in 1974, rewed in 1975, and split again in 1976.

Actress and writer Carrie Fisher was never one to hold back when she had something to say, and in 2016, she shared a fascinating tale in her memoir The Princess Diarist. According to Fisher, she had a brief but "intense" affair with her Star Wars co-star Harrison Ford while they were filming the movie in 1976. As People reported, Fisher was just 19 years-old when the three-month affair took place, while Ford was 36 ... and married to Mary Marquardt. Ford and his wife also had two kids.

"It was Han and Leia during the week, and Carrie and Harrison during the weekend," Fisher told People. She also explained to The Guardian that the situation had really been a matter of "unreciprocated love ... I love him. I'll always feel something for him." 

Ford, meanwhile, eventually (kind of) commented on the affair to GQ magazine in September 2017, after Fisher's December 2016 death, saying her decision to write about their relationship "was strange  ... I didn't [read it]." 

Remember that heartbreaking scene in 2003's Love Actually when Emma Thompson's character finds out that her husband by unwrapping a Christmas gift and realizing the heart-shaped necklace she'd discovered before Christmas was not for her? It turns out that Thompson had pulled from her own experiences to channel the impact of her character's heartache. 

In 1994, Thompson was married to actor Kenneth Branagh (They'd been together since co-starring in the 1987 BBC drama Fortunes of War,) when she discovered that he was having an affair with Helena Bonham Carter (his co-star in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.) Thompson told The Telegraph, "I had my heart very badly broken by Ken. So I knew what it was like to find the necklace that wasn't meant for me ... I've had so much bloody practice at crying in a bedroom."

Branagh went on to date Bonham Carter for five years, and according to The Belfast Telegraph, he only made one brief public comment on the dissolution of his marriage to Thompson: "It's always sad, marriages breaking up. But I refuse to be affected over issues like this, by how the world at large appears to feel." 

Thompson took the high road, and according to a 2013 piece in Us Weekly, the actress made her peace with Bonham Carter many years earlier. 

John Malkovich ran into a lot of drama both on and off-screen during filming of 1988's Dangerous Liaisons. At the time, the actor's marriage to actress Glenne Headly was falling apart in the midst of his affair with co-star Michelle Pfeiffer. 

The film's director, Stephen Frears, later explained to The New York Times: "Dangerous Liaisons is about betrayal and lies and relationships unraveling. It was one of those times where reality and art intersect. It was overwhelming to John. Even for a man who delights in bad behavior, that was a difficult time." 

And yet, Malkovich's older brother, Danny, told Entertainment Weekly in 1993, "He came home with Michelle ... I think that's the happiest I've ever seen him."

Malkovich and Headley divorced in 1988. Pfeiffer and Malkovich reportedly broke up not long after, and according to The Age, Malkovich subsequently "cried for a year." 

However, according to The Guardian, Malkovich looked back on the affair in 2008 and said, "It's hard to believe Michelle Pfeiffer ever said hello to me." 

He now lives with long-time partner, Nicoletta Peyran, with whom he has two children. 

Cheers star Ted Danson had been married to his second wife, Casey, since 1977, when he met comedienne Whoopi Goldberg while filming 1993's Made in America. According to People, Danson and Goldberg quickly became an item during the film's ten-week shoot, despite his marital status. 

Cameraman Ted Churchill described a love scene that he shot with the pair, telling the magazine, "When it was happening, I just assumed it was acting ... It's hot in retrospect." The film's director, Richard Benjamin, said, "There was chemistry." Per the same profile in People, Danson had this to say about Goldberg: "I'd walk in Whoopi's shadow for the rest of my life — I adore the woman."

Cut to 2015. Goldberg dryly looked back on her one-year relationship with Danson, telling Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live (via The Huffington Post): "That's, like, 20 years ago! ... I've boned so many people since then."

Danson and Casey officially divorced in 1993, and he married actress Mary Steenburgen in 1995. 

Look back to old Hollywood, and it's clear that on-set affairs have been commonplace for decades. In fact, one of Hollywood's most infamous couples began with an on/off-screen tryst. As Country Living described in August 2017, Lauren Bacall was just 19 years-old when she met Casablanca star Humphrey Bogart (who was then 45 years old) on the set of To Have and Have Not in 1944. Bogart was married to his third wife, actress Mayo Methot, at the time, but he and Bacall kicked off what would become a years-long love affair. According to Flavorwire, the film's director, Howard Hawks, also had feelings for Bacall and tried to talk her out of seeing Bogart, to no avail. 

"Bogie and Bacall" went on to get married, have children together, and star in more films (and also reportedly engage in affairs with other people.) They stayed together until Bogart's death in 1957. Bacall would later write in her memoir (via Country Living), "No one has ever written a romance better than we lived." 

Another classic Hollywood union that started on the set of a film was the decades-long relationship between Spencer Tracy and actress Katharine Hepburn (pictured). According to Slate, the pair met during filming of 1942's Woman of the Year and kicked off a 26-year affair that lasted until Tracy died in 1967. All this despite the fact that Tracy was married to wife Louise Tracy when he started up with Hepburn, and stayed married to Louise for the rest of his life.

By the end of 1941, Tracy was no longer living with his wife, but he also didn't live with Hepburn, reported Slate. The dynamic would continue for years, as "he couldn't break it off with Hepburn to go back to his wife because their on-screen romance was too valuable for both of them ... he would never leave Louise for Hepburn, who didn't want to get married anyway." Nonetheless, his personal and professional relationship with Hepburn lasted through multiple alleged bouts of alcoholism and unsavory behavior.  

According to Vanity Fair, Hepburn did not attend Tracy's funeral out of respect for his family. However, she did ask Louise to be friends; Louise replied, "But you see, I thought you were only a rumor." Ouch.

Chad Michael Murray and Sophia Bush were themselves co-stars when they first got together. They met on the set of One Tree Hill and married in 2005. However, they separated just five months later when rumors swirled that Murray had cheated on his wife with Paris Hilton, his co-star on the film House of Wax. To make matters worse, Murray and Bush had to continue working together for another three years on One Tree Hill. 

In 2011, Murray claimed that he had since reevaluated the manner in which he was living his life, telling E! Online, "When you're young and you're thrown into something that I was definitely not ready for — I'm human and screw up. I'm glad I went through it, I really am, because I wouldn't have come out the other side." 

Bush has taken a bit of a harder line on the failure of her marriage, writing in Cosmopolitan in January 2017, "The reality is that, yes, it was a massive event in my life. And the trauma of it was amplified by how public it became." According to News.com.au, Bush also labeled Michael Murray a "f**kboy partner" in a September 2016 Instagram response to a fan.