Actors Who Married Their Directors
In Hollywood, it's not uncommon for an actor to marry another actor. This isn't that surprising, given that they spend long hours together on set and there are ample opportunities for sparks to fly. But, while it's fairly routine for an actor to fall in love with a fellow cast member, what's less common is an actor and their director getting together. That's understandable — most directors tend to keep things strictly professional. However, it's not totally unheard of.
Sometimes, when an actor gets with their director, it's a spur of the moment thing that doesn't lead anywhere. That being said, there are some notable instances of a helmer and their star entering into a committed relationship after falling for one another during a shoot. In fact, there are more actor-director couples out there than you may realize. From time to time, they even go on to tie the knot.
Milla Jovovich
Milla Jovovich's big screen career began with her role in 1991's "Return to the Blue Lagoon," gaining her attention when she was just 15 years old. Six years later, she hit the big time playing Leeloo in "The Fifth Element," co-written and directed by Luc Besson. During production of the Bruce Willis-led, 1997 sci-fi cult classic, she and Besson fell for each other, something those involved with the film saw coming. "Luc said to me at one point, 'You realize that whoever I cast as Leeloo, I have to fall in love with them,'" producer Iain Smith told Entertainment Weekly. "And I understood what he meant by that. He didn't want just some pretty girl, he wanted someone with that particular individual thing that Milla had."
Jovovich's marriage to Besson lasted for two years, with the pair calling it quits in 1999, apparently due to the strain of living in different countries. Later, Jovovich fell for and married another director. In 2000, she met Paul W.S. Anderson when she tried out for the lead role in 2002's "Resident Evil." The helmer was immediately smitten. "She was sitting on the steps outside my office," Anderson told The New York Times. "I thought she was the coolest-looking woman in the world." After an on-and-off engagement that lasted several years, the pair tied the knot and welcomed three daughters.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson
Back in the mid-2000s, Aaron Taylor-Johnson was an up-and-coming actor trying to make a name for himself under his birth name Aaron Johnson. He had small roles in films like "Shanghai Knights" and "The Illusionist," then, in 2009 (just prior to his career-making performance in "Kick-Ass") he starred in a John Lennon biopic titled "Nowhere Boy," directed by Sam Taylor-Wood in her directorial debut. Sparks clearly flew between Taylor-Wood and Johnson during the production of the film, because Taylor-Wood gave birth to their first child the following year. They welcomed a second child in January 2012 and tied the knot six months later.
Upon getting married, they both took the second name Taylor-Johnson. "I just don't see why women need to take the man's name," Aaron Taylor-Johnson told London's Evening Standard. "I wanted to be a part of her just as much as she wanted to be part of me." The name change wasn't the only thing that made people talk — the fact that the actor is 23 years younger than his wife also raised a lot of eyebrows. The reaction was "slightly sexist," Aaron Taylor-Johnson said in an interview with the Irish Independent, pointing out the hypocrisy of the press when it comes to younger men dating older women. "It's not unusual," he said. "I'm an old soul and she's a young soul. We don't see an age gap, we just see each other."
Kate Beckinsale
Kate Beckinsale shot to prominence in 2003 with the supernatural action-horror film "Underworld." At the time, she was in a committed relationship with fellow British actor Michael Sheen. They had a child together, though they never got married. When Beckinsale won the career-defining role of the mysterious vampire assassin Selene, she persuaded "Underworld" director Len Wiseman to cast Sheen as the movie's main villain. Sadly, Beckinsale and Sheen decided to call it quits soon after, bringing their near-decade long relationship to an end.
Not long after the split, Beckinsale began dating "Underworld" director Len Wiseman, and the pair soon tied the knot. The whole situation seemed scandalous from the outside, but Beckinsale later made it clear that there was no impropriety on the set. "The popular notion of how Michael and I broke up — that we were on ['Underworld'] and I ran off with the director — is just not true," she told Entertainment Weekly in 2012. Three years after this interview, Beckinsale and Wiseman revealed that they had split up, though it took another four years for their divorce to be finalized.
Emmy Rossum
"Shameless" star Emmy Rossum had her breakout roles in the '00s, appearing in the Clint Eastwood drama "Mystic River" and the Roland Emmerich disaster film "The Day After Tomorrow." Following a two-year marriage to music producer Justin Siegel, she met her second husband on the set of the 2014 romantic drama "Comet," the film's director, Sam Esmail. At the time, Esmail hadn't yet had his own breakout hit (that would come in 2015 when he created the critically acclaimed series "Mr. Robot"), but Rossum was already an in-demand star. "Comet" paired her with Justin Long, though it was behind the scenes that the actor found real love with Esmail.
The actor and her director began dating almost immediately, and Esmail proposed in a very unique fashion. "We have a tradition of reading the 'Modern Love' section of The New York Times every Sunday," Rossum told Vogue. "So I got in the bathtub with the 'Modern Love' section as he's posted up on the sink. I didn't notice any kind of ring in his pocket, and I began to read the article, and the story is about a director who falls in love with an actress, and I started to think: Huh, that's strange. And then I realized that it was our love story. [...] By the time I finished the story he was down on a knee in the bathroom, with me in the tub." They got married in 2017, and in 2021 Rossum gave birth to their first child. They welcomed their second child in 2023.
Christine Taylor
Christine Taylor and Ben Stiller met in 1999 when the latter was directing a pilot episode for a show that never came to air. The proposed Fox series was titled "Heat Vision and Jack," a sci-fi comedy that would have starred Jack Black and Owen Wilson. "My wife came in to audition for the role of the sexy sheriff," Stiller, who had just come out of long-term relationship with actor Jeanne Tripplehorn when he got to work on the pilot, told Parade in 2016. "She came in and she was great," he recalled. "Christine was coming out of a relationship too. We went on a date and it clicked."
Stiller and Taylor went on to make the likes of "Dodgeball," "Tropic Thunder," and both "Zoolander" films together. The couple welcomed two children, and Taylor decided to step back from Hollywood to raise them. They revealed that they were breaking up after almost two decades together in 2017, but the separation wouldn't last — they were spotted out and about together on several occasions over the next few years, and in 2022, Stiller revealed that they had rekindled their relationship during the COVID-19 pandemic after he moved back in with Taylor and their kids.
Ingrid Bergman
Actors marrying their directors is certainly not a recent phenomenon, and an early example is Ingrid Bergman. One of the biggest stars of the 1940s, Bergman is known for classics like "Casablanca," "Gaslight," "For Whom the Bell Tolls," and "Spellbound." Early in her career she was married to Swedish doctor Petter Lindström, but, while making 1950's "Stromboli," she began an affair with the film's Italian director Roberto Rossellini, who was also married. When news of the affair broke, it became one of the biggest Hollywood scandals ever, and things became even worse for Bergman when people found out that she was pregnant with Rossellini's child.
Bergman gave birth just days before her divorce from Lindström was finalized. She and Rossellini quickly tied the knot, but it was too late — standards were different back then, and Bergman's reputation was very much tarnished in Tinseltown. Bergman left Hollywood following the controversy, relocating to Italy with her new husband. She made a few more films with Rossellini and the couple had two more children before eventually divorcing in 1956. Coincidentally, their daughter Isabella Rossellini also became romantically involved with one of her directors, "Blue Velvet" helmer David Lynch. The two never married, however.
Frances McDormand
Four-time Oscar winner Frances McDormand made her acting debut back in 1984, plucked from obscurity by directors Joel and Ethan Coen to play the lead in their debut feature film "Blood Simple." A groundbreaking neo-noir crime thriller, it catapulted the Coens and McDormand into the limelight. "Blood Simple" did more than make them famous, though: It also kickstarted one of Hollywood's steadiest romances.
McDormand met Joel Coen during her first audition for the film, impressing him and his brother. When the Coens asked her to come back and read with another actor, she said that she was too busy — her boyfriend at the time was going to be in a soap opera, and she wanted to watch it. "Nobody ever says something like that when you're starting to offer them a job," Joel Coen told The New York Times years later. "We really liked that. It was so guileless — just what we wanted for Abby."
During filming, the two bonded over books, with Joel giving his star some reading recommendations. "He seduced me with literature," McDormand told The Daily Beast. They didn't waste much time, getting married the same year "Blood Simple" came out. While both McDormand and Coen were unknowns back then, they've both become stars since, making them one of the biggest — and perhaps most unsung — Hollywood power couples.
Linda Hamilton
1984's "The Terminator" launched the careers of Arnold Schwarzenegger and director James Cameron, who met his future wife on the film. However, while Cameron and Linda Hamilton (who plays Sarah Connor in the seminal sci-fi flick) first met on "The Terminator," their route to exchanging rings wasn't quite a straight line. Around the same time the movie came out, Cameron split from his first wife and married producer Gale Anne Hurd, who he divorced in 1989. If you're thinking he started dating Hamilton next, you'd be mistaken. At this point he pivoted from a producer to a fellow director, marrying future Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow. It was the filming of 1991's "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" that reunited him with Hamilton and led to their romance.
Following his divorce from Bigelow in 1991, Cameron and Hamilton moved in together, finally getting married in 1997. They would split up two years later, though, and Cameron began a relationship with "Titanic" actor Suzy Amis. "'Titanic' was the most painful thing in the world," Hamilton told the Daily Mail in 2010. "But this wasn't because Jim was cheating on me. Jim went off with Suzy because we were taking a break from each other and he was free to go with her." Since their divorce, Hamilton has avoided marriage, while Cameron has remained with Amis, with whom he has three children. Cameron also has a daughter with Hamilton.
Kate Winslet
You may have assumed that we were going to discuss Kate Winslet's marriage to Sam Mendes when you saw her name on this list, but Winslet and Mendes had already been married for several years when they made 2008's "Revolutionary Road" together. We're actually referring to Winslet's previous marriage to filmmaker Jim Threapleton, who courted the star in the late '90s after meeting her while making the 1998 film "Hideous Kinky," the movie she made right after "Titanic."
Threapleton was an assistant director on "Hideous Kinky," the tale of an English woman who relocates to Morocco with her two young daughters. As dramatic as the film is, it seems that the romance between Winslet and Threapleton was even more so, because they were soon married. It was "love at first sight," the actor said. "Before I met Jim I was very much, 'Oh I don't believe in marriage,'" Winslet told The Guardian at the time. "But we don't want to be without each other. Ever."
They welcomed daughter Mia Threapleton in 2000, but the marriage didn't last. Within a year of their daughter's arrival, Winslet and Threapleton were done. It was an "amicable and respectful" split, Winslet's rep said (via ABC News). Today, Mia Threapleton is an actor herself. She appeared alongside her mother in 2014's "A Little Chaos," and, more recently, they worked together on an episode of the female-led anthology series "I Am." Winslet revealed that she was "blown away" by her daughter's performance during an appearance on "Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg" (via People).
Helen Mirren
Taylor Hackford is the Oscar-winning helmer of beloved films like "An Officer and a Gentleman" and the Jamie Foxx-led Ray Charles biopic "Ray." He first met his future wife Helen Mirren when she auditioned for a role in his 1985 film "White Nights," a musical drama starring dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov. The two got off to a rocky start when Hackford made Mirren wait for a long time for her audition. They soon warmed up to each other, but Hackford was married to someone else at the time, so things were strictly professional. The director divorced his wife soon after the film, however, and a relationship with Mirren quickly blossomed.
Mirren and Hackford finally got hitched in 1997 and are still going strong to this day. In 2022, Mirren revealed that her relationship with Hackford partly inspired her performance in the hit Paramount+ series "1923," in which she plays the wife of Harrison Ford's tough cowboy character Jacob Dutton. "I may be the boss, but he's the leader," she told Entertainment Tonight. "It's an equal partnership and I know [what that's like] from being with my husband. We've been married now for — I've completely forgotten how long we've been married for. But, you know, quite a long time."
Kate Capshaw
Kate Capshaw beat out more than 100 actors for the role of Willie Scott in 1984's "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," directed by her future husband Steven Spielberg. The pair didn't get married right away following the film — in fact, Spielberg went on to wed actor Amy Irving, who at the time was best-known for the role of Sue Snell in Brian De Palma's "Carrie." They got hitched in 1985 but divorced four years later, with Spielberg and Capshaw (who was previously married to a high school principal turned trademark firm exec) moving in together soon after.
Spielberg and Capshaw tied the knot in 1991, with Capshaw converting to Judaism. Both already had children from their previous relationship, and they've added four more kids to their clan since. Somewhat surprisingly, Spielberg resisted the temptation to cast Capshaw in any of his later films. She retired from acting after the TV movie "Due East" in 2002, content to be away from Hollywood and raising her family, though several of their kids have since become performers themselves.
Michelle Williams
When it comes to the love life of Michelle Williams, it's hard to forget the death of her former partner Heath Ledger, with whom she had a daughter. They were together from 2004 to 2007, with Ledger tragically dying of an accidental overdose the following year. Thankfully, Williams has found love again since then. She married musician Phil Elverum in 2018, but they called it quits the following year. Her next marriage was right around the corner — in 2019, she starred in the TV miniseries "Fosse/Verdon," a dramatization of the love story between actor/director Bob Fosse and iconic Broadway star Gwen Verdon.
Williams fell for "Fosse/Verdon" director Thomas Kail, and they tied the knot in a low-key ceremony in 2020. Later that year, Williams and Kail welcomed a child, and, in 2022, they added another to their family. Speaking to Variety when she was pregnant with her and Kail's second child, Williams called the whole situation "totally joyous," adding: "As the years go on, you sort of wonder what they might hold for you or not hold for you. It's exciting to discover that something you want again and again, is available one more time. That good fortune is not lost on me or my family."
Rita Hayworth
Rita Hayworth was one of the biggest stars in the world at the height of her fame, headlining pictures opposite the likes of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. Famed actor and director Orson Welles set his sights on working with Hayworth after seeing her splashed across the cover of Life magazine. When Welles decided to produce and direct a stage production titled "The Mercury Wonder Show" (created as a morale booster for troops during WWII), he immediately thought of Hayworth. She agreed to play the role of his assistant, but "Hayworth's possessive Columbia Pictures boss Harry Cohn stepped in and told her to quit the act or risk breach-of-contract," The Hollywood Reporter later revealed.
Cohn may have put an end to Hayworth being fake-sawed in half on stage in front of servicemen, but he couldn't stop her from marrying Welles. The two tied the knot seemingly on a whim on September 7, 1943. Hayworth was working on the musical "Cover Girl" with Gene Kelly at the time, and she announced her intention to make Welles her husband when she arrived on set one morning. During her lunch break, she went to the marriage license bureau with Welles and made good on her promise. They had a daughter a few years later and then collaborated on the film "The Lady from Shanghai," but they were separated during the shoot and had divorced by the time the film came out in the States.