Celeb Couples Who Go To Extremes To Avoid The Limelight

Maintaining a private life as a celebrity is a full-time job in itself. With the rise of the 24/7 news cycle along with the public's seemingly insatiable appetite for scandalous tabloid content, it's become nearly impossible for entertaining to just be a day job. Fans want constant contact on social media, special content on premium apps, and most of all, inside dirt on how their favorite performers are really living. While most celebs embrace this aspect of their lives as an acceptable trade-off for fame and fortune, others do not, especially when it comes to their romantic relationships. Here are some star couples who go above and beyond to keep their personal lives behind closed doors.

It may not seem like Beyonce and Jay Z are especially private people, because they're so often seen at awards shows and other special events. But Jay Z rarely gives interviews, and Beyonce has gone to great lengths to try to control what concert photos of her the media runs. So despite their high visibility, their image is tightly controlled. That control apparently manifested itself in some highly questionable security procedures being put in place at Lennox Hill Hospital in NYC when it was time for Blue Ivy, their daughter, to arrive. Obviously, the family gave scant info on the very personal event, but since Beyonce delivered in a public hospital, certain details couldn't be kept under wraps.

According to The New York Times, several other people who happened to be patients in the maternity ward at Lennox Hill Hospital had some unpleasant anecdotes about sharing the floor with hip-hop's royal couple. Another delivering mother, Rozz Nash-Coulon, alleged that she observed taped-over security cameras, covered windows, and bodyguards blocking certain areas of the ward. A father, Edgar Ramirez, backed that up by claiming he couldn't access the neonatal unit for three hours, and that he was told by a guard, "the floor is on lockdown." Of course, Bey and Jay denied any special treatment, and the hospital stated, "The security plan was designed not to limit access to patient care areas," but come on. Are we supposed to believe there was a chance some lowly "normal" was going to snap a shot of Beyonce shuffling up and down the hallway and breathing through contractions while Jay Z desperately tried to remember that Lamaze class? Give us a break.

Before their fairy tale Hollywood marriage hit the skids, complete with accusations of abuse and infidelity, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were living an enviable life. Career-wise, they were at the top of their game, which somehow didn't seem to slow down their ever-expanding family. And despite lots of obviously bogus tabloid attention, few scandal stories about the A-List couple ever really stuck. Part of the reason for that success had to be the fact that in 2009, they literally fled the country for the sake of privacy.

Chateau Miraval is the 1,000-acre estate and vineyard in Provence, France that Brad and Angelina called home until 2016 when they listed it for $60 million dollars as part of the process of dividing their assets. And despite the fact that it seemed like they may have moved there because it was a European Hollywood of sorts — U2's Bono and The Edge, and Johnny Depp were all neighbors — Brad actually told Parade it was because "our kids have a more normal life there." Yes, because normal to most children includes living a home with amenities that include a private lake and moat, an indoor swimming pool and spa, their own forest, and a three-mile long driveway separating them from the outside world. Yep, sounds exactly like plain ol' Suburbia.

Margot Robbie came out of nowhere with her fiery performance as Leonardo DiCaprio's wife in The Wolf of Wall Street. Since then, she's become a bona fide star with top billing in movies like Focus opposite Will Smith and the DC blockbuster, Suicide Squad. But she didn't exactly embrace the glamorous Hollywood lifestyle that goes along with such fame. In fact, as of six months before her wedding, she and her boyfriend, assistant director Tom Ackerley, lived in an apartment in London with four other roommates, so it would seem that just privacy in general didn't seem like much of a concern for the couple, right? Think again.

In December of 2016, Robbie and Ackerley got married in Robbie's home country of Australia in a wedding so secretive they didn't even tell wedding guests the location. According to News.com.au, the small gathering of 50 attendees were "asked to assemble at different locations from Byron Bay to the Gold Coast, where they were collected by buses and escorted to the venue." They also had to forfeit their cell phones and cameras, so there would be no chance for leaks via social media or an unscrupulous sale to the tabloids. Geez, were they getting married or doing a table read for the new Star Wars movie? Luckily, Margot was apparently allowed to bring her phone which captured this classy shot that the blushing bride shared a few weeks later on Instagram.

Jamie Foxx has two daughters from two different baby mamas, both of whom he has never identified publicly. Though the paparazzi caught a glimpse of Jamie in Maui with his youngest daughter's mom, she remains unidentified as of this writing. And just a few months ago, his oldest daughter's mother, Connie Kline, was revealed for the first time, breaking 22 years of secrecy. But it's not as though Jamie keeps them a secret to shut these women out of his life. He has a supposedly great relationship with both of them and according to Radar Online, he even bought Kline a half million dollar house and a Mercedes. So why the mystery?

According to a 2012 Oprah interview (via Daily Mail), Jamie's philosophy on marriage and dating comes down to one thing: protecting his career. He said, "I need somebody who's not thirsty for what I do. Whoever you date, don't let anybody know. In order to make it in this business, it has to be someone who is willing to sacrifice a little bit more than what they would sacrifice in a normal relationship." Which is odd, because he's barely been able to keep it a secret that he's been allegedly dating Katie Holmes since 2013, who if we're not mistaken, is also in the business. So not only did falling for Katie Holmes make Tom Cruise go publicly insane, it may also have gotten Foxx to break his own rules. What is it about that woman?

Despite his viral status as the internet's boyfriend and favorite meme, Ryan Gosling is notoriously private off-camera. The same goes for his long-time girlfriend and fellow actor, Eva Mendes, who once famously told New York Magazine (via Vulture) that she wished the tabloids would "blur the faces of their dogs, Hugo (hers) and George (his), in photos, like British papers do to kids' faces." Alrighty. So when it came to the birth of their daughters, they kicked the privacy precautions into hyperdrive.

When Mendes was pregnant with their first daughter, Esmerelda Amada, in 2014, nobody knew about it until she was seven months along, which is an amazing feat considering not only is she one of the most recognizable actresses, but she also lives in L.A. aka Paparazzi Central. Apparently that two months of exposure was even too much, because daughter number two, Amada Lee — yes, her first name is her sister's middle name — arrived in complete secrecy. There was speculation a few weeks ahead of her arrival, but even TMZ didn't get the official scoop until two weeks after the birth. They achieved this with some crafty, spy-level planning that mostly included Mendes just skipping a bunch of red carpets and wearing big clothes. Okay, so it wasn't exactly Mission: Impossible - Secret Baby or anything, but still pretty impressive, right?.

We already established that Johnny Depp was one of Brangelina's famous neighbors back in their Parisian vineyard days. Although as of this writing, both Depp and the Jolie-Pitt's have their European estates on the auction block. But that wasn't Depp's only retreat. When he really wants to get away from literally everything, he can head down to Little Hall's Pond Cay, his private, 45 -acre island in the Bahamas that he bought for $3.6 million after discovering it while shooting Pirates of the Caribbean. It has six beaches, five of which are named after his former lover, Vanessa Paradis and their children, and one for Hunter S. Thompson, Depp's friend and mentor. Depp and Amber Heard also celebrated on the island after their wedding, so the island is clearly his happy place.

In a rare glimpse at his personal hideaway, Depp allowed Vanity Fair's Douglas Brinkley to tag along for a trip to the private paradise, which Depp describes as "so pure and beautiful." He also said, "The island is my decompression. It's my way of trying to return to normalcy. Escapism is survival to me." Which is probably why Depp was said to have hid out there during his tumultuous and uncharacteristically public divorce proceedings from Amber Heard. And it seems Depp is now seeking the recluse life even on the mainland, since reports have come out that he's attempting to connect a cul-de-sac of homes he owns in the Hollywood Hills with a series of tunnels. Is there such a thing as becoming so rich you start to invent problems for yourself? Because it sounds like Depp is right at that level.

Kerry Washington's privacy game is so on point that almost no one even knew she and pro footballer, Nnamdi Asomugha, were even dating when they got married. E! News actually thought they had a breaking story with the news they were officially together, only to have to turn right around and update the story a few hours later to say that they'd actually gotten married in secret several weeks before.

It shouldn't come as a shock that Washington kept mum about her man. She's spoken out many times on how important her privacy is to her. And in a rare, but indirect address of rumors that her marriage was in trouble at a SXSW panel (via Us Weekly), Washington opened up just enough to swat them away. She said, "If I don't talk about my personal life, it means I don't talk about my personal life," she explained. "That means not only did I not tell you when I was getting married, it also means if somebody has rumors about what's going on in my marriage, I don't refute them, because I don't talk about my personal life." Boom. No spin even needed. It's a good thing Olivia Pope's clientele doesn't have that kind of iron-willed image control or else she'd be out of a job.