50 Hollywood Actresses And Their Partners: Then And Now

This edition turns the format around and follows the actresses, which changes the story more than you might expect. Women in this industry have historically had their relationships treated as the main event - the marriage as the headline, the career as the footnote.

For Years The Relationship Was Treated As The Headline

Several performers in this collection spent long stretches being introduced primarily in relation to a partner rather than to their own work. That framing was standard practice rather than an occasional lapse.

The then-and-now pairing pushes back against it a little. Placing an image from the height of the tabloid interest next to one from today makes clear how brief that period actually was, and how much of each career happened before and after the noise.

Who These Partners Actually Are Tells You Something Important

The partners here range widely, and the range itself is informative:

• Fellow performers. The most visible pairings, and generally the most heavily covered.
• Adjacent creative fields. Musicians and writers, familiar with public life without competing directly.
• No connection to the industry. The largest group among the longest relationships in the collection.

The Correlation is Hard to Miss

That last group - partners who have never given an interview in their lives - lines up almost exactly with the longest relationships here. The same pattern shows in the actors' equivalent.

The Longest Relationships Involve Partners Nobody Has Heard Of

Nine minutes. More in the Love Stories section.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Bottom Line

Fifty careers that outlasted the coverage of who their partner was. Watch above, then browse the full Love Stories section.