Actors in Love

It will be Valentine's Day soon, and that means Cupid will be doing his best to zing the strings of your heart. But just in case his aim is a wee bit off this time around, you can always take great solace in knowing that your love life will never be as unfortunate as that of most movie stars.

Take, for example, Richard Burton in 1963, when wife Susan discovered he was having an affair with Elizabeth Taylor, then the most beautiful - and famous - woman in the world. To make up for the affair, when Valentine's Day came around, Dick bought Susan a gorgeous Mexican hacienda. It didn't work.

Yes, stars may be on top of the world in a million ways, but most of the time their relationships don't last much longer than the average length of their movies. That's probably in part because despite the most comprehensive body of research that proves it doesn't work, actors continue to fall in love with each other, often throwing their lives and the movies they happen to be working on at the time down the drain in the process.

Despite Liz and Dick, Hepburn and Tracy, Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton (even wearing vials of each other's blood around their necks didn't stop them from breaking up) and hundreds of other examples, actors still go on location, shoot love scenes with other actors, and become so convinced they have met their soul mate that they toss whole families overboard in order to be with their alter-idol.

There was the catastrophic coupling of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, two charming, attractive, marginally talented people whose ill-fated love affair not only imploded into no love at all but also seems to have wiped out two high-profile, big-bucks careers in the process. (That is, if you consider the miniscule box office take of Gigli, Jersey Girl, Payback, Shall We Dance and Surviving Christmas any sort of empirical evidence.)

A few years back, there was Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe, who got together shooting Proof of Life in Poland, London and Ecuador. Crowe, who is now married, was a legendary cad who ripped apart the Ryan-Quaid family and tore it into little shreds before moving on - no doubt with regret - to his next beautiful co-star (Nicole Kidman, I believe it was). There was Billy Crudup and Mary Louise Parker, two talented actors who actually paid their dues on Broadway, where they fell in love with each other, won Tony Awards and did quirky, intelligent films (Jesus Son, Pre, Fried Green Tomatoes), a few plays (Proof, Arcadia) and then became engaged. Mary Louise got pregnant with Billy's child - and eight months later, on the cusp of becoming a father, Billy fell in love with Clair Danes making Stage Beauty, and left Mary Louise as pregnant as they come. There are so many of them, falling in and out of love with one another in film after film, their affairs almost become as banal as a chase scene in the next Bond flick. 

They're actors in love, or so they think they are.

My question for all these thespians is why? Why do they do it? Why do actors continue to fall in love with other actors, over and over and over and over, especially when they know the lay of the minefield? Can't they separate reality from fiction? Don't they know it's just got to end badly? Haven't these people ever heard you don't date at work? Most of us everyday people are at least wary of asking out co-workers, but stars just seem to plunge full-steam ahead, damn the torpedoes. Well, isn't it about time somebody yelled "cut" on the off-screen action, for their sake as well as ours?

Of course, it's not just the fault of actors. Dysfunctional relationships need two to tango, and in the case of actors in love, it isn't just a case of actor and actor; it's actors and their audience. Yes, partly, it's our fault. We can't get enough of actors in love with other actors, even if they'd be better off with a producer, writer, director, bank president or lawyer. Actress Helen Mirren is married to director Taylor Hackford, and they've lasted 23 years together. Who's Meryl Streep married to, again? I have no idea. Because it's not an actor, most of us likely just don't care.

We punish actors who seem happily married, too. Married couples don't do good box office together. Warren Beatty went from box office boy wonder as a commitment-phobic young stud - Bonnie & Clyde, Shampoo, Heaven Can Wait - to happily married box office dud when he started making movies with wife Annette Bening - Bugsy, Town & Country, and Love Affair. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman got ignored in Eyes Wide Shut and Far and Away. Maybe Tom was so disturbed by audiences' ability to ignore him that he sent Nicole packing. But he didn't get their attention back with Vanilla Sky, made shortly thereafter with Penélope Cruz, which maybe mega-bombed in part because the press announced that Penélope was destined to be the next Mrs. Cruise.

Penelope, however, then made Sahara with Matthew McConaughey in a hot, tropical location, far away from reality and the forces that shape it. Guess what? Recently, in the New York Post, Cruz's publicist confirmed that Penélope and Mr. McConaughey are indeed dating.

Do you begin to see a pattern developing here?

So if you find yourself down in the dumps this Valentine's Day, just remember: they may have perfect teeth, gorgeous hair, six-pack abs, seventy or eighty million dollars apiece and thirty-three new messages on their cell phones, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're happier than you are.