20 Stars Who Divorced Before They Turned 30

Things have gotten messy since Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner announced their split in September 2023, and it seems that everyone has an opinion. However, while fans are choosing sides between Team Jonas and Team "Queen of the North," there's another element of the split worth focusing on  — Turner's young age of 27. 

Shortly after the couple's divorce became headline news, model Emily Ratajkowski (who separated from her husband at age 32) posted a TikTok video calling pre-30 divorce "chic." "There is nothing better than being in your 30s, still being hot, maybe having a little bit of your own money, figuring out what you want to do with your life [and] everything, and having tried that married fantasy and realizing that it's maybe not all it's cracked up to be," she said.

EmRata may have just missed the 30 mark, but Turner joins a massive club of celebrities who divorced before 30. In fact, there are so many of them that we could not possibly fit all of them on our list. We did not have space for the failed marriage of Chad Michael Murray and Sophia Bush, or that of Jamie Bell and Evan Rachel Wood. We could not even include huge stars like Eminem, Kate Winslet, Jennifer Lopez, or Scarlett Johansson, all of whom had their first divorce before 30. Miley Cyrus and many other stars, dead and alive, were also near-misses, but don't fret because our list is solid. Here are 20 big celebs who divorced (sometimes twice!) before they turned 30.

Kim Kardashian is a three-time divorceé and, considering she is only in her early 40s (and who she is), we would be shocked if number three was the final one. Each of Kardashian's marriages had its own issues, but the second one with Kris Humphries is the most infamous due to its incredibly short tenure of 72 days. Interestingly, while Kardashian was over 30 by that divorce, her groom was not. Though the split happened after roughly two months, the actual divorce took about a year and a half to be finalized, by which time Humphries was 28 and Kardashian 32. Kardashian, of course, went on to marry Kanye West a few years later (in May 2014), after giving birth to their first child in June 2013 — the same month her divorce became legally official.

Kardashian and West had four kids together and were married for a total of eight years (but split after six). This was not an especially long marriage, but for Hollywood, it is nothing to sneer at. It is also a personal best for Kardashian, as her first (and often forgotten) try at wedded bliss ended after less than four years. 

In 2000, Kardashian wed Damon Thomas, a music producer a decade older than her. She was only 19 when they eloped in Las Vegas, so we are actually surprised the union lasted as long as it did. Years later, Kardashian revealed that she was high on ecstasy when she married Thomas, a statement that he condemned in the press.

Angelina Jolie met Brad Pitt in the summer of 2004 when Pitt was married to Jennifer Aniston, and the couple became officially linked in July 2005 after a year of rumors. They married in August 2017 but filed for divorce only two years later. It then took until 2019 for the pair to be declared legally single, and the incredibly messy split is still in the courts due to a war over their winery. 

Luckily for Jolie, her first two marriages ended much more amicably and far quicker. Jolie first got married in 1995, when she eloped with actor Jonny Lee Miller months after wrapping filming for their movie "Hackers." They separated a year later, but Jolie did not file divorce papers until 1999. The pair have maintained a connection and have even been spotted hanging out as friends in the years since.

Jolie's first marriage legally ended in late 1999, when Jolie was 24, and she married actor Billy Bob Thornton in early 2000. The odd couple scored a lot of attention for wearing vials of each other's blood as necklaces and for their 20-year age gap. Alongside Thornton, Jolie started the adoption process for her son Maddox in 2002, but ended up adopting alone since they split shortly after. She was 27 when her divorce from Thornton was finalized in 2003. We presume the pair are still cool since Jolie remains in contact with Thornton's son Henry.

Britney Spears has a bad track record when it comes to marriage — perhaps even worse than other stars with three or more marriages, if only because of how short they have all been. A lot of fans had high hopes for her most recent marriage to Sam Asghari, who for a time appeared to be a calming influence on the singer. The couple first started dating in 2016, but their courtship lasted far longer than their union. They married in June 2022 and split 14 months later (when Asghari was 29, qualifying him for this list in his own right). 

Any fan who knows Spears from her heyday knows this is far from her shortest marriage, given that her first one lasted a mere 55 hours. Spears and her childhood friend Jason Alexander infamously eloped in Las Vegas in 2004, and then annulled it days later when the pop star's mom demanded it.

Spears was only 22 when she wed in Vegas' infamous Little White Wedding Chapel — which is, coincidentally, where Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner legally married. She was also 22 when she married Kevin Federline, her second husband and the father of her two sons, Sean Preston and Jayden. Spears married the backup dancer in September 2004, had her kids in 2005 and 2006, and then divorced in 2007. The marriage was short, sure, but it still lasted long enough for us to get five episodes of the inexplicable reality TV series "Britney and Kevin: Chaotic," which totally lived up to its title.

For many of us, it is hard to picture Will Smith with anyone other than his current wife Jada Pinkett Smith, as they have been together for decades and their public images are super intertwined. Those who were alive in the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" days, though, know that Smith was married before he met his current spouse, but it is not something that enters the mind unless it is explicitly mentioned or we get a glimpse of Smith's oldest son. Smith's ex-wife Sheree was even a guest host on Pinkett Smith's online talk show "Red Table Talk" in 2022.

Smith met Sheree Zampino in 1991 when they were both visiting the set of "A Different World." They got married the next May, at which point they were pregnant with their son Trey (who was born in November 1992). Smith was only 27 when he and Zampino divorced in 1995, toward the end of "Fresh Prince's" run. "With Sheree and with Trey, that was a really difficult time," Smith told his current wife on "Red Table Talk" in 2020. "Divorce was the worst thing in my adult life, divorce was the ultimate failure for me." The actor married a second time, to Pinkett Smith, on New Year's 1997 and went on to have two more children with Pinkett Smith. Though the couple has weathered some large storms, they have said divorce is not an option as they approach year 28 of marriage.

Katy Perry is currently in a relationship with Orlando Bloom, with whom she shares daughter Daisy Dove. The couple has been together on and off since 2016, but it has been smooth sailing for a while now, especially since they got engaged back in 2019. Happy life with Bloom aside, we cannot quite forget about some of Perry's previous relationships and, in particular, her brief marriage. 

The singer wed comedian Russell Brand in 2010 in an elaborate Indian ceremony that featured elephants and a fortune-telling parrot. We don't think the parrot was very good at its job, though, since it clearly did not warn Perry about what was to come. Brand broke up with his wife only 14 months after their wedding, when she was 27 — and in an awful way. "Let's just say I haven't heard from him since he texted me saying he was divorcing me December 31, 2011," Perry told Vogue in 2016 (via Us Weekly).

Brand and Perry first met in 2008, when Perry made a cameo in "Get Him to the Greek," and they started dating in 2009. Brand has since been bombarded with legal troubles and allegations, and Perry hasn't had trouble distancing herself from her ex. "She can't believe she was married to someone accused of such horrible things. She fears that marrying Russell was the worst decision she ever made," an insider told The Mirror of Perry's reaction to the allegations.

Macaulay Culkin is arguably one of the biggest child stars of all time, with movies like "My Girl," "Richie Rich," and especially "Home Alone" holding court amongst the most memorable family-friendly films of the 1990s. Like many kid actors, Culkin was forced to grow up prematurely, and it could not have helped to have his family drama play out in public (for years, rumors swirled that the actor had "divorced" his parents). 

Though Culkin never actually divorced his mother or father (he was emancipated), he does have experience with divorce. The actor was only 18 when he wed Rachel Miner, and he was 22 when the marriage legally ended. Culkin has yet to remarry, but he is engaged to Brenda Song, his partner since 2017 and the mother of his two children.

Culkin has always been rather private about his personal life, but we know he met fellow actor Miner when they were both students at New York's Professional Children's School. We also know that Miner broke up with Culkin numerous times before they walked down the aisle in 1998, so their 2000 separation and 2002 divorce was no shocker. Culkin — who also had an eight-year relationship with Mila Kunis — has said that his current partner Song treats him much better than his previous ones. "She just does nice things, and I feel like at first I didn't know how to be treated well in that kind of way. It was a strange, almost foreign concept," he said on the podcast "Anna Farris is Unqualified."

Mariah Carey as we know her today is a completely different version of the person the world first met when the singer made her debut in the early 1990s. Carey was only 21 when her musical career took off, thanks to the success of her self-titled first album. That was also her age when she became romantically involved with Sony Music head honcho Tommy Mottola. Mottola was two decades older than Carey, and their dynamic reflected that power imbalance. 

While Carey has gone on to have a number of high-profile romances, including her marriage to Nick Cannon, none have left as large an impression as her time with Mottolla. The music executive apologized to Carey in his memoir, "Hitmaker: The Man and His Music," but the singer has held onto her ill feelings surrounding the marriage.

Carey was 23 when she and Mottola wed, in an elaborate 1993 ceremony that reportedly cost half a million dollars. The couple split up in 1997 and divorced in 1998, after which we learned that the fairytale was a façade all along. "You might want to picture a child bride," Carey told Cosmopolitan in 2019. "There was a conscious effort to keep me as this all-American, whatever that means, girl. It was very controlled. There was no freedom for me as a human being. It was almost like being a prisoner." It was not until divorcing Mottola that the true Carey emerged — with fierce independence, a sexier sound, and a closet full of butterfly tube tops.

After "Full House" ended, actor Jodie Sweetin had a tough go of things — something she has documented in many forums, including in her memoir "unSweetined" — and her path to love has been messy as well. The actor has three divorces under her belt, as well as one failed engagement, and her decision-making skills in the romance department have not always been solid. Still, we sincerely hope the fourth time is the charm for the lovable star, who wed addiction therapist Mescal Wasilewski in 2022, after five years together.

Sweetin first got married in 2002, when she was a 20-year-old college student with a bubbling addiction. She kept her substance misuse secret from her police officer hubby Shaun Holguin, and it was while she was in sober living that the two decided to split. Their divorce was finalized in early 2006, a year before Sweetin married driver and transportation coordinator Cody Herpin. 

Sweetin and Herpin tied the knot in 2007 and welcomed a daughter in April 2008 before splitting that November. The divorce was not finalized for two years, and the subsequent custody battle caused Sweetin to briefly relapse (which she detailed in her book). Sweetin was only 29 at the time of her April 2010 divorce from Herpin, but she had lived a lot of life by then. She went on to marry Morty Coyle, the father of her second daughter, but the two separated a year after marrying and were divorced in 2015.

Diehard "Glee" fans who stuck with the series through to the bitter end may have differing feelings about the new characters the show introduced during its run, but most recognized Melissa Benoist's immense talent when she appeared as Marley Rose beginning in Season 4. And if anyone doubted Benoist, her six seasons playing the lead on "Supergirl" surely convinced them of her on-screen gifts. Benoist's significant acting (and singing) talents are considerably more well-known than her ill-fated marriage to fellow "Glee" cast member Blake Jenner. Benoist and Jenner were wed for only two years, and their marriage perhaps would have remained largely forgotten if not for the domestic violence allegations that were made public years later.

Benoist and Jenner got engaged in 2013 after a year of dating and married in a secret ceremony in 2015. The world learned about their nuptials a few months after the clandestine wedding, but things fizzled quickly from there. They split in 2016, and distance was given as the issue for the relationship's demise. In 2019, Benoist posted an emotional Instagram video detailing the domestic abuse she suffered at the hands of a younger romantic partner. And though she did not name Jenner, it did not take people long to connect the dots. Jenner subsequently admitted to the physical violence a year later, in an Instagram post that was part apology and part excuse.

If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

Secret weddings are not a new thing in Hollywood, and some stars are even repeat offenders. Take Janet Jackson, who kept two marriages a secret — one of which happened when she was just 18 and ended in an annulment a year later. Like Jackson, Emmy Rossum was very young when she first married, in a secret ceremony that received no tabloid attention whatsoever. Had Rossum never gotten divorced, we may not even know about the marriage to this day, although the actor's increasingly bright star may have forced the secret to come to the surface by now. In any case, Rossum has been much more open about her second marriage, to producer and "Mr. Robot" creator Sam Esmail, with whom she shares two children.

Details about the "Shameless" actor's first marriage first became public in September 2009, when music executive Justin Siegel filed divorce papers. The couple started dating in 2007 and wed in February 2008, which means that Rossum was only 21 the first time she walked down the aisle. The divorce was not finalized until the end of 2010, about four months after Rossum's 24th birthday. "Everyone messes up in relationships and has peaks and valleys in their personal lives," Rossum told InStyle Hair in 2012 (via HuffPost). "When I realized it wasn't the end of the world and I would keep on standing, I knew it was going to be OK." Rossum married her current partner Esmail in 2017 after roughly four years together.

Much like her "The Handmaid's Tale" character June Osborne, Elisabeth Moss is not one to mince words, even if she has something unpleasant to say — and when it comes to her marriage, Moss pretty much only has unpleasant things to say. Moss was only married to "Saturday Night Live" alum Fred Armisen for a brief period, but it was a defining part of her adult life. "It was extremely traumatic and awful and horrible," she told Vulture. "At the same time, it turned out for the best. I'm glad that I'm not there. I'm glad that it didn't happen when I was 50. I'm glad I didn't have kids. And I got that out of the way. Hopefully. Like, that's probably not going to happen again."

Moss first met Armisen in October 2008, when her "Man Men" co-star Jon Hamm hosted an episode of "Saturday Night Live." Things moved incredibly quickly from there — the couple was engaged by January 2009, and married that October. Moss filed divorce papers the following September, though the documents listed June 2010 as the date of separation. She has not spoken of the union many times, but when she has, Moss has had no redeeming words for Armisen. Armisen, for what it is worth, has openly admitted to his flaws as a romantic partner. On the "WTF with Marc Maron" podcast, he owned up to putting little work into the marriage and suggested he was unfaithful. Moss was 28 when the divorce was finalized in May 2011.

A lot of people assume that Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis were married since they were together for nearly a decade and share two children, Otis Alexander and Daisy Josephine. Despite what many believe, the couple never walked down the aisle, although they were engaged for the last seven years of their relationship. 

Wilde and Sudeikis famously split in 2020, only a couple of months before her relationship with Harry Styles became public thanks to some well-timed paparazzi shots of the pair holding hands. Wilde's relationship with Styles did not last either, and sadly, the actor/director is no stranger to heartache. She is also no stranger to walking down the aisle, having done it in her younger years before she reached her current level of fame.

Wilde eloped with Tao Ruspoli in 2003 when she was only 18 years old. In addition to being a filmmaker, Ruspoli is an Italian prince (yes, an actual prince!) whose family owns the Palazzo Ruspoli in Rome. The pair's actual separation date is unclear, but they had reportedly been living apart for a while prior to Wilde filing for divorce in March 2011. Given that she was 18 when she got married and only 27 when the divorce was finalized, it is not surprising that things did not work out. "The good thing about getting divorced young — if there is a good thing — is that it makes you realize there's no schedule in life," Wilde later told Town & Country (via People).

Drew Barrymore is not even 50 but it somehow feels like she has lived 100 years of life already. We suppose that is what happens when you start a show business career before your first birthday, maintain relevancy throughout each and every period of your existence, and embrace the twists and turns of life. 

Barrymore's career has most recently landed her on television screens with her very own talk show, and her personal life has been similarly unpredictable. Though she is currently in her "America's Sweetheart" era, Barrymore has had many public identities including the "Wild Child" label she wore in her youth and the "Sex Kitten" image assigned to her as she came of age. Her multiple marriages reflect where she was in her life, beginning with her first one in 1994.

Barrymore met her first husband, Jeremy Thomas, at a bar, and she married him the next year in March 2014, when she was just 19 years old. The star has said she knew it was a mistake that very day, though the marriage had a slightly longer shelf life; 19 days, to be exact (although the divorce was not finalized until 1995). Despite her young age, Barrymore had already been engaged twice before Thomas, and she quickly jumped back into dating after the split. Her next walk down the aisle came in 2001 when she wed comedian Tom Green. The couple split six months after marrying and divorced in 2002, making Barrymore a two-time divorcee at 27.

Jessica Simpson started her career in the shadow of two more successful blonde pop stars — Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera — and though she had some musical hits, the star did not truly break out until the start of her MTV reality show "Newlyweds." The three-season series chronicled Simpson's life with then-husband Nick Lachey, and it saddled her with a "dumb blonde" label that took years to shed. 

Simpson bared all in her 2020 memoir "Open Book," giving fans a look behind the perfect veneer she had been forced to keep up for so many years. And since she now runs a billion-dollar company, the joke is on everyone who doubted her brains and tenacity — and that includes her ex-husband, who treated her more like a child than an equal partner.

Years before the Jonas Brothers and their purity rings, Jessica Simpson was a poster child for waiting until marriage to lose one's virginity. This became a huge part of her public identity, so her relationship with "98 Degrees" singer Lachey became another pillar in her public story. Simpson began dating Lachey in 1998 when she was 18 and he was 24, and the pair wed in 2002 (after a brief breakup the year before). Less than a year after their wedding, "Newlyweds" debuted and catapulted them to a whole new level of stardom. Though their brand was very much that of a unit, the couple split in 2005 and finalized their divorce the following year, a month before Simpson's 26th birthday.

Uma Thurman has been married twice, but her second marriage has overshadowed her first one to the point where younger fans may not even know about her first walk down the aisle. There is good reason for that, too, since Thurman's marriage to Ethan Hawke was not only longer than her first marriage but also resulted in two children — one of whom, Maya, has become a star in their own right. But before marrying Hawke in 1998 (and divorcing him seven years later), Thurman took a shot at marriage and completely missed the target. She has referred to her first marriage to actor Gary Oldman as a "mistake," but one that she had to make.

"You know, what can I say? He's a truly great actor. We met when I was 18. He was 12 years older. It was a crazy love affair that ended, as it needed to. He was my first love. I had no prior experience," Thurman told Vanity Fair in 1996. The couple first met in either 1988 or 1999, depending on who you ask, and it is believed that Oldman left his partner Leslie Manville to be with Thurman. Oldman married Thurman in 1990, the same year that his divorce from Manville was finalized, but not many details about the union are publicly known. The pair split in 1992 when Thurman was only 22. After Hawke, Thurman was engaged to financier Arpad Busson — with whom she shares a daughter — but the pair ended things in 2014 before tying the knot.

Thus far, we have focused on living celebrities who got divorced before they reached 30 years old, but that does not mean this is a newer Hollywood trend. There are plenty of examples of deceased stars who wed — and divorced — early, and some of them racked up a great number of marriages. Four-time divorcee Janet Leigh had two of those divorces under her belt by her third decade, for instance, while Larry King divorced three of his seven wives before 30 (although he later remarried one of them). Heck, forget 30 — both Jerry Lee Lewis and Marilyn Monroe had their first divorces before they were legally allowed to drink. Since we cannot focus on all of these dead celebs, we chose one of our favorites for this list: Richard Pryor, who married a total of seven times over the course of his life.

Pryor grew up in a brothel — his mother, father, and grandmother all made a living through sex work until his mother left when he was 5 or 6 — and so it is not surprising that his approach to relationships was different from the norm at the time. The legendary comedian was certainly not scared of divorce, although it should be noted that two of his marriages were to former wives, which means that he had seven divorces but only five ex-wives. Pryor's first marriage (to Patricia Price) lasted from 1960 to 1961, and he was still a year shy of 30 when he divorced his second wife, Shelly Bonus, in 1969.

Hilary Duff grew up in the public eye, which means that each and every relationship she has ever had has happened on a public stage. Unlike some of her contemporaries, Duff never had any major dramas associated with her love life, but her romances still made the news. That includes early teen relationships with Aaron Carter and Frankie Muniz, as well as her controversial relationship with "Good Charlotte's" Joel Madden, which began before Duff turned 18. It was only a year after her split with Madden, in 2006, that Duff met her first husband, Mike Comrie. Always a bit ahead of her chronological age, Duff decided to walk down the aisle with the former NHL player despite her young age.

Duff and Comrie started dating in 2007 and wed in 2010 when she was 22 and he was 29. They welcomed their son Luca Cruz in March 2012 but separated about two years after that. Duff filed for divorce in February 2015, and the divorce was finalized a year later. Though Duff is now married to Matthew Koma — her husband since December 2019 and the father of her daughters, Banks Violet and Mae James — she has said she and her son speak of Comrie often at home. "I like to tell him about how I met his father, about the good times we spent together, about the greatest joy when I found out I was pregnant and how his father and I coped with pregnancy," the star told Grazia in 2022. "It is a very sweet thing."

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' marriage feels like it ended a very long time ago, and his union with Nicole Kidman is basically ancient history by now. But before Kidman, there was another marriage — one people rarely talk about anymore, despite it being very public at the time. It might just be the fact that marriage #1 happened in the 1980s, or it might be that it resulted in no children, but Cruise has a whole generation of fans who have no idea he was already married and divorced well before Kidman. They probably also do not know Cruise dated Cher, but it might have been she who whet his appetite for older women. Cruise's first wife, Mimi Rogers, was six years his senior and he started dating her shortly after he dated Cher (although Cher was 16 years older than Cruise, not six).

Cruise and Rogers — who the actor has said was his first love — married in 1987 after meeting at a dinner party the previous year. Cruise was 25 when the couple wed, and 28 when they divorced in 1990. That was the same year that he married his second wife, Nicole Kidman. Cruise and Kidman were married until 2011, and together adopted two children, Isabella and Connor. The actor married a third time in 2005, to the significantly younger Katie Holmes, after a whirlwind romance that garnered much press coverage (remember that whole jumping on Oprah Winfrey deal?). The couple, who welcomed daughter Suri in 2006, divorced in 2012 — and Cruise has yet to remarry.

Kate Hudson is by all accounts a full-on romantic, but one who has yet to make things stick for a significant amount of time. The actor has a long list of famous ex-boyfriends, including Owen Wilson, Dax Shepard, Nick Jonas, Lance Armstrong, and Diplo. Hudson also has a couple of ex-husbands, and she has been engaged to her current beau Danny Fujikawa since 2021. She and Fujikawa have been together since 2017, and they share daughter Rani Rose, born in 2018. Interestingly, Hudson has said she was friends with Fujikawa for over a decade before they started dating, which means that he was in her life for at least some of her other significant relationships, including her engagement to Matthew Bellamy (father of her son Bingham).

The first time Hudson walked down the aisle was in 2000 when she was 21 years old. She had been dating The Black Crowes' Chris Robinson for less than a year when they married on New Year's Eve, at her mother Goldie Hawn's house. The couple welcomed son Ryder in 2004, two years before separating. Though they divorced in 2007, Hudson has said she has no regrets about marrying Robinson. "He also was so important in teaching me what it felt like to be unconditionally loved," she said on "The World's First Podcast." "Chris completely opened that floodgate for me. No matter how complicated the relationship got at one point, the most important moment for me was meeting him and him allowing me to understand what that felt like."

Avril Lavigne has been unlucky in love, but that has never stopped her from getting back out there. She was most recently linked with rapper Tyga in a short-lived relationship that came directly off the heels of the end of her engagement to musician Mod Sun in February 2023. While she never made it down the aisle with Mod Sun, Lavigne has two failed marriages under her belt. Both of her ex-husbands are fellow singers, which is no surprise given that Lavigne has a clear pattern. Brody Jenner aside, Lavigne has typically stuck to musicians — her list of exes also includes two more musical guys, Pete Jonas and J.T. Rotum. Interestingly, both of the men she married also hail from the Great White North.

Lavigne's first marriage was to Sum 41 frontman Deryck Whibley, with whom she tied the knot in 2006. Lavigne first met Whibley when she was 17, but the pair did not start dating until she was 19. Lavigne was 21 when they wed, and freshly 26 when their divorce was finalized in 2010. She got engaged again in 2012 after dating Nickelback singer Chad Kroeger for six months. The pair married in July 2013, but split two months after that — the same month that Lavigne turned 31. Lavigne has remained friendly with both of her ex-husbands and has called them "good people." "We had marriages, we lived together, I knew their families, they knew mine, we just stayed close and there's a mutual respect," she told USA Today.