In most on-screen couples scenes, actors intend to convince the audience of their flowering romance through real acting. This romance might influence real lives and lead to wedding bells.
While some real-life romances began first in reality before being paired on-screen. Let’s have a look at some real-life couples who collaborated romantically on-screen.
Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone (Bridesmaids)
Met as friends in the early 1990s, Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone began dating in 1998 after doing a writing course together at an impromptu theatre in LA.
In an episode of Gilmore Girls in 2003, the couple appeared in a scene together. They got married in 2005 and shared the screen as a couple for the first time in the 2011 comedy, Bridesmaids. While McCarthy appeared as Megan, the groom’s strident sister, Falcone played a covert air marshal who falls for McCarthy’s appeal. The couple has played together in films such as Identity Thief and The Boss.
Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons (The Power of the Dog)
After Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons met on the sets of Fargo, they played high-school sweethearts Peggy and Ed in 2015, but they did not come together the following year. The real-life couple came together on screen in the 2021 film, The Power of the Dog, in which Plemons and Dunst were nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress, respectively, at the Oscars. But neither took the statuette home in March 2022. A few months later, they got married in Jamaica and have two boys together.
Will Smith and Pinkett Smith (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air)
Hollywood’s famous couple’s love story began in 1994 when Pinkett Smith didn’t get a role in ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’. The next year, they started dating and married in 1997.
They acted as a couple in a 2001 film, Ali. Will Smith appeared as the great boxer, while Pinkett Smith played the role of Muhammad Ali’s wife, Sonji Roi. The couple has two children, Jaden and Willow, and Trey, the eldest son from Smith’s first marriage.
Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman (Eyes Wide Shut)
An elite couple in the ’90s, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman became an item after playing together in Days of Thunder, a 1990 film. After months of meeting, they married and got divorced in 2001. Before the couple was legally separated, they shared the screen as a couple in Far and Away (1992) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999).
Faith Hill and Tim McGraw (1883)
Though the couple is known for spending most of their time in making music together, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw shared the screen as a couple for the first time in 2021’s drama, 1883. They played a married couple, Margaret and James Dutton. Faith and Tim married in 1996 and parent three daughters together.
John Krasinski and Emily Blunt (A Quiet Place)
John Krasinski and Emily Blunt started dating in November 2008 and took their marital vows in Como, Italy, in 2010. Though both actors are often cast in Hollywood, they appeared as a married couple in a 2018 post-apocalyptic horror, A Quiet Place.
John Krasinski was the director and co-writer of the 2018 film. The film is about a couple who parent and protect their family from blind monsters with sharp hearing senses.
Viola Davis and Julius Tennon (How to Get Away With Murder)
Married in 2003, Voila Davis and Julius Tennon have mostly worked together in their production company JuVee Production. In 2018, they had a fictional romantic relationship in a season of How to Get Away With Murder.
Davis played by Annalise Keating, encounters a good-looking stranger on a flight played by Tennon. Later, they stay in a hotel room together.
Edward Burns and Maxine Bahns (She’s the One)
The actor, writer, and director in She’s the One, a 1996 romantic comedy, Edward Burns casts his then-love interest Maxine Bahns with whom he was romantically linked in the film as well. The film received averagely good reviews; Bahns’s performance was under analysis by the critic.
But their romance in real life didn’t last long. Edward Burns, in 2003, got married to Christy Turlington, a model. While Bahns continued with acting, and she recently starred in Nicholas Refn’s Too Old to Die Young in 2019.
Angela Bassett and Courtney B Vance (ER)
Angela Bassett met Courtney B Vance when they were students at Yale School of Drama in 1986. Their romance brewed a decade later and they got married in 1997.
In 2009, they appeared on screen, as a couple. Bassett’s character was Dr Cate Banfield in ER, while Vance made his appearance as her husband, Russell, in the final season of the medical drama. Before this, in 2005, they performed as a couple at the Guthrie Theater for a production of His Girl Friday, in Minneapolis Minnesota.
Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor (Zoolander)
Christine Taylor first met her husband, Ben Stiller, in 1999 at work while shooting for the pilot episode for the series Heat Vision and Jack. They began dating and starred together in 2001’s film, Zoolander. Thereafter, they played together in many films. While Stiller played a self-titled model, Taylor came on-screen as a journalist who falls in love with the model. The couple has collaborated in several films, including Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, Tropic Thunder, and Zoolander 2, as well as in the TV series Arrested Development and Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Though the couple separated in 2017, they solved their marriage while living together during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.
