Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck: Gwyneth Paltrow's Relationships Before Chris Martin
We were all surprised when Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin announced their separation by way of a post on Paltrow’s Goop website on Tuesday evening. The couple, who have been married for 10 years and had two children together announced they were ‘consciously uncoupling’, and thus the showbiz world began mourning another high profile couple. But for Gwyneth a high profile split is nothing new, actually she’s had her fair share of famous romances.
Before there was Chris and before there was Angelina, Hollywood’s hottest couple was Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow. Although now the two might seem like an unlikely pairing, back in the mid nighties they were the hot couple of the moment. These two set out to define the era for star couples, sporting matching cropped blonde hair and sometimes even matching outfits, (too far). They even got engaged! Although they might have seem like a young Hollywood dream come true, sadly it wasn't to be and they split in 1997 after three years of dating. Gwyneth would later take responsibility for the break up, telling Diana Sawyer ‘My kind of internal stuff really tripped up that whole relationship and I felt really responsible, and also like I was the architect of my own misery … I just made a big mess out of it.’.
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Gwyneth’s career really stated taking off once her romance with Brad ending. In 1997 she had starred in ‘Sliding Doors’ but her big break was still to come as she landed a role in ‘Shakespeare in Love’. Here she played the love interest of William Shakespeare in a very fictional account of the writing of Romeo and Juliet. Off screen Gwyneth was in love herself, this time with co-star Ben Affleck. Affleck had just become a hot Hollywood property after landing a best screenplay Oscar for ‘Good Will Hunting’, which he penned with friend Matt Damon. After all the Brad drama, Gwyneth tried to keep this one a little more low profile, but still she took him as her date to the 1999 Oscars where she won the best actress award for ‘Shakespeare in Love.’ Despite enjoying a three year romance, this pair just didn’t seem to match, with Paltrow saying, ‘’he's got a lot of complication, and you know, he really is a great guy. I just think we have a very different sort of value system.’ Whatever that means, however the pair have said they are still friends.
After Affleck, Paltrow was rumored to be hooking up with her ‘Royal Tenenbaums’ co-star Luke Wilson in 2001. This one was kept very much out of the public eye, with only a few pics of the couple ever being taken together. It was said to have lasted a year before Paltrow declared herself single in 2002. That October Gwyneth’s father Bruce died after a long battle with cancer. Three weeks later the actress found herself backstage at a Coldplay concert meeting singer Chris Martin. A year later the couple were spotted together at the UK premier of her movie ‘Sylvia' in their first public appearance as a couple.
Preferring to keep things private, the couple wed in a secret ceremony in 2003, their daughter Apple was born in 2005 and son Moses followed in 2006. Although they’ve tried to keep their marriage relatively low profile, rumours that things might not be all good, have often follow Chris and Gwyneth. Particularly due to a much talked about Vanity Fair article which never happened and pictures of the actress and friend Donovan Leitch, which were published by the tabloids last year. As for Gwyneth’s words on marriage she told Harpers Bazaar last year, ‘I think you do fall in and out of love and you just keep going, and every time you go through a really difficult phase, you rediscover something new and it just gets better.’ Sadly it seems this time, they just couldn't make it work.
__More: Gwyneth Paltrow And Chris Martin "Consciously Uncouple": Does This Mean A Divorce?__