‘Bennifer’ is over. Can celebrity marriages last? Here are 9 enduring Hollywood relationships

Following months of reports alleging a rocky relationship, Jennifer Lopez has filed for divorce from Ben Affleck, according to The New York Times.
The couple, playfully nicknamed “Bennifer” by the public, ended an engagement in 2004, but rekindled in April 2021 and were married in July 2022, per NBC News.
Bennifer fans suspected something was awry when J.Lo cancelled her summer “greatest hits” tour earlier this year, per The Washington Post. Months later, the couple officially broke up.
Lopez and Affleck aren’t the only Hollywood couple to split up in the past year. There have been dozens — Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas, Hugh Jackman and Deborra-lee Jackman, Joshua Jackson and Jodie Turner-Smith, to name a few.
Celebrity couples are up against high divorce rates. A study from the the U.K. based organization Marriage Foundation found that celebrity couples have a divorce rate of 40% after 10 years, compared to 20% in non-famous people.
While celebrity divorce and breakups routinely flood headlines, there are some Hollywood marriages that have stood the test of time.
Here is what some enduring celebrity couples have said about maintaining a lasting marriage.
Matthew Broderick was introduced to Sarah Jessica Parker by her brothers in 1991, who founded the Naked Angels Theater Company in New York City, per Elle Magazine.
Broderick and Parker got married in 1997 and have stayed together since.
“He’s probably the funniest fellow I’ve met in my whole life. … He’s so bright, so handsome, I think he’s the most handsome man I’ve seen in my life. And he inspires me. I’m mad for him, totally.” Parker told The Los Angeles Times in 1996.
During a 2020 appearance on the the SiriusXM show “Quarantined with Bruce,” Broderick said there is no “secret” to marriage.
“I don’t know the secret at all, but I’m very grateful, and I love her. It’s amazing.”
Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick met in 1987 on the set of “Lemon Sky.” They got married the following year, per Today.
Now, 36 years into marriage, they share two grown children and live on a farm in Connecticut.
“We’re really lucky. We got lucky really young,” Sedgwick told Page Six about her marriage to Bacon. “(But) you know it’s work, it’s always going to be work.”
“A partnership for that long demands a lot of you. … I feel like a very lucky woman.”
While Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn are not technically married, the pair have maintained an exclusive partnership for 40 years, per People. The pair met on set of the live-action movie musical “The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band” in 1968 — but it was another 17 years before they reconnected and started dating in 1983.
During a 2023 interview with CNN, Hawn revealed why she never married Russell.
“Why should we get married?” Hawn said.
“Relationships are hard,” she said. “They’re not always easy. There’s all kind of hurdles that we go through. There’s things that we believe and things that we don’t believe in that we agree on.”
She concluded, “So I think ultimately staying independent with independent thinking is important so you can hold onto yourself and you can actually have that feeling.”
After meeting on set of the ABC sitcom, “Bosom Buddies,” in 1981, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson hit it off as friends, Wilson said, per People.
They eventually coupled off and got married in 1988. Now, Hanks and Rita are going on 37 years of marriage.
“The success of our relationship was a matter of timing, maturity and our willingness to have an intimate connection,” Hanks told Oprah Winfrey, per People. “When I married Rita, I thought, ‘This is going to require some change on my part.’ I won’t deny that providence was part of us finding each other, but our relationship isn’t magic — the way it’s shown in movies.”
“In real life, our connection is as concrete as me sitting here. Not that marriage doesn’t come close to being hell in a handbasket sometimes. But we both know that no matter what, we’ll be with each other — and we’ll get through it.”
Danson met Steenburgen while trying out to play her husband in the 1983 movie “Cross Creek,” per “Today.” The pair reconnected in 1994 when they co-starred in the movie, “Pontiac Moon.” They got married in October 1995.
Steenburgen said she “would sign up for a hundred more lifetimes with” Danson, she told People in 2018.
“(Our love) just gets more profound and deeper as we go through the blessings and joys, but also the hurdles, of life together. … He is my partner in the deepest sense of the word in this life.”
“There’s no hollow in my heart where I don’t love him, or where I doubt this love,” she said. “There’s no secret place where I say we weren’t a thousand percent supposed to spend our life together.”
While filming “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar got to know each other — but it wasn’t for another three years that they kindled a romantic relationship.
They planned a dinner with a mutual friend, but when the friend backed out, it was just the two of them.
“We were just two people at dinner catching up,” Gellar recalled, per People. “We had a long car ride and a long dinner and things just happened.”
The pair were married in Mexico in 2002 and have two children together, Charlotte Grace and Rocky James.
“Sarah and I are so night and day, and it’s why we’ve always been a good couple and had a good relationship, because everything I don’t enjoy she’s really good at, and everything she really doesn’t enjoy I’m really good at,” Prinze told People in 2019. “It’s never a hassle for me to cook dinner because I like it.”
It’s been over 40 years since Ozzy Osbourne and Sharon Osbourne got married in 1982. The couple met during the 70s and were introduced by Sharon’s father, Don Arden, who worked for Ozzy’s band, Black Sabbath, per People.
It has not been all perfect — such as a brief separation in 2016 — but the couple have endured.
Sharon believes their relationship has worked out because they are “cut from the same mold.”
“We’re both odd balls,” Sharon told E! News in 2023. “I might look quite normal, but normal is not a word I use often. We were two wild young people that found each other.”
“No relationship is easy,” she continued, “and you have to work at it. You get your ugly times, your bad times and your horrific times. But if you love each other enough, you’ll work through.”
Posh and Becks started dating in 1997 after the former Spice Girl attended one of Beckham’s Manchester United games in London.
“Love at first sight does exist,” Victoria Beckham said of their first encounter in a letter to her younger self published in Vogue UK in 2016. “It will happen to you in the Manchester United players’ lounge.”
“While the other football players stand at the bar drinking with their mates, you will see David standing aside with his family. … And he has such a cute smile. You, too, are close to your family, and you will think how similar he feels to you.”
The couple welcomed their first son, Brooklyn, in March 1999 and married three months later in July, per Today. They now have three more children together: Romeo, Cruz and Harper.
“No one said marriage was going to be easy. Yes, there have been bumps along the road,” Victoria told W magazine in 2007. “But the fact is we’ve come out of everything we’ve been through stronger and happier. It’s even better now than when we were first married. After all these years, we can just come home and have a laugh together.”
Country singers Tim McGraw and Faith Hill have been married since 1996 and share three daughters: Gracie, Maggie and Audrey, per Today.
They met in 1994 at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville.
“Today is our 27th wedding anniversary and I fall for you everyday, every time you walk into the room, every time I see you in our 3 beautiful daughter’s smiles,” McGraw wrote on Instagram in 2023. “I just keep falling and always will. Happy anniversary my love!”