Their lifestyles are the envy of millions and they often spend a fortune on their weddings. But for those who have long suspected that it doesn’t guarantee celebrities a fairy tale marriage, here’s the proof. Their marriages are twice as likely to break down as those of everybody else, research claims.
Fifty percent of all famous or showbiz couples who married in the first decade of the century were divorced by 2014, according to the study released in London.
A slew of A-list names did not make it even to their first anniversary and one, Britney Spears, managed two marriages that lasted less than four years between them.
By contrast, over the same period, 26% of marriages among the non-celebrity population failed to stay the course. The analysis by the Marriage Foundation think-tank in the UK examined the record of 488 celebrity couples who married between 2001 and 2010 and how they were faring by 2014.
Paul Coleridge, a former High Court family judge and the think-tank’s founder, said: “Celebs become, no doubt involuntarily, high-profile role models. But this research shows that in their domestic lives these people experience even more pain and suffering than us lesser mortals, and in this respect, at least their lives are not to be copied or envied. They are false icons who are subject to even greater pressures to separate.”
He added that the famous “may dazzle us with their £100 000 (R4.6 million) fairy story weddings, 15-tier cakes and horse-drawn carriages, but all too often these weddings are followed, in quick succession, by a bitter and tortuous divorce played out in the public eye in grisly detail”.
Those who did not make it to the one-year mark include Drew Barrymore and Tom Green, Eminem and Kim Mathers, and Britney Spears and Jason Alexander. Spears’s first marriage was annulled after only 55 hours. Her second – to Kevin Federline – lasted longer, but they were divorced after less than three years. Katy Perry and Russell Brand managed less than two years. Couples who held out longest before divorce among the celebrity ranks include the “consciously uncoupled” Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin, whose marriage lasted nearly 11 years, and Nigella Lawson and Charles Saatchi, who managed 10 years.
Celebrities are more than six times more likely to divorce in their first year of marriage than others, the study found. Even after the initial period of adapting to married life, they appear more vulnerable to the stresses that can tear a couple apart. More than a quarter of celebrity couples were divorced after six years of marriage, compared with just over one in 10 among others.
Daily Mail