There are some rare celeb relationships that the public has no idea about. However, for most people in the spotlight, their love lives seem very, very public — and therefore so do their breakups.
Here are 19 celebs who opened up about navigating their very public breakups:
1.
Joe Alwyn and Taylor Swift ended their six-year relationship in 2023. A year later, he told the Sunday Times, “What is unusual and abnormal in this situation is that, one week later, it’s suddenly in the public domain, and the outside world is able to weigh in.”
3.
In 1998, Matt Damon publicly ended his year-long relationship with Minnie Driver by announcing he was single on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Afterward, Minnie told the LA Times, “Everything has to be made so mythic. There are these archetypes that everybody has to take apart. I had to be the victim. It’s horrendous breaking up with someone anyway, but to have it be so public and to be cast in a role that I would never play if they were paying me — this wronged woman! It’s unfortunate that Matt went on Oprah; it seemed like a good forum for him to announce to the world that we were no longer together, which I found fantastically inappropriate. Of course, he was busy declaring his love for me on David Letterman a month previously.”
4.
In 2011, Kris Humphries and Kim Kardashian were infamously married for 72 days. In a 2019 essay for The Player’s Tribune, he wrote, “There’s definitely a lot about that world that is not entirely real. But our actual relationship was 100% real. When it was clear that it wasn’t working…what can I say? It sucked. It’s never easy to go through the embarrassment of something like that — with your friends, with your family…But when it plays out so publicly, in front of the world, it’s a whole other level. It was brutal.”
5.
In 2023, Sophie Turner‘s four-year marriage to Joe Jonas ended in a highly publicized divorce, and tabloid speculation ran rampant. In 2024, she told British Vogue, “I mean, those were the worst few days of my life. I remember I was on set; I was contracted to be on set for another two weeks, so I couldn’t leave. My kids were in the States, and I couldn’t get to them because I had to finish Joan. And all these articles started coming out…It hurt because I really do completely torture myself over every move I make as a mother – mum guilt is so real!”
6.
In a 2023 Instagram post, Lupita Nyong’o announced her breakup with Selema Masekela after a year together. She wrote, “I find myself in a season of heartbreak because of a love suddenly and devastatingly extinguished by deception. I am tempted to run into the shadows and hide, only to return to the light when I have regained my strength enough for me to say, ‘Whatever, my life is better this way.’ But I am reminded that the magnitude of the pain I am feeling is equal to the measure of my capacity for love.”
Then, in 2024, she told Glamour, “I wanted to be honest. Honestly, the thought of having to update people one at a time was going to be harrowing. I had made the choice to share the relationship with the world, and I wanted to make the choice to share the end of it with the world.”
7.
In 2014, Calvin Harris reportedly caught Rita Ora unaware when he announced the end of their year-long relationship on Twitter then barred her from performing “I Will Never Let You Down” — which he wrote and produced — at the Teen Choice Awards.
In 2015, Rita told Marie Claire, “There was a reason why I split up with him. And there was a reason why I’m at this point in my life where I feel like I have so much musical freedom, and I don’t have to explain myself to anybody…It was more of a thing where I was in awe. I was at that point in my relationship where I felt he could do no wrong. I thought he had my back and that he’d never steer me wrong. But then ‘I Will Never Let You Down’ came out, and everything started to go a bit weird.”
8.
Calvin Harris and Taylor Swift ended their 15-month relationship in 2016. Initially, he tweeted, “The only truth here is that a relationship came to an end & what remains is a huge amount of love and respect.” Taylor reposted it.
Things escalated when, about a month later, Taylor’s reps confirmed rumors that she co-wrote Calvin’s collab with Rihanna, “This Is What You Came For,” under a pseudonym. In a series of since-deleted tweets, Calvin praised her work and confirmed she also sang a bit on the track but “initially she wanted it kept secret.” However, he followed up with this: “Hurtful to me at this point that her and her team would go so far out of their way to try and make ME look bad at this stage though.”
9.
In 2009, Lindsay Lohan went through an eventful breakup with her girlfriend of almost two years, Samantha Ronson, who reportedly hired security to block Lindsay from a party at a hotel they were both staying at, changed the locks on their shared home, and looked into getting a restraining order.
The night of the party, Lindsay reportedly tweeted, “Being cheated on does wonders to you. I’m doing this publicly because u&ur friends call People [magazine]. So you win, you broke my heart. Now go away. I loved you. [sic]”
10.
In 2022, Jason Momoa and Lisa Bonet announced the end of their 16-year relationship/five-year marriage in a joint Instagram post. In another Instagram post two months later, he praised his step-daughter Zoë Kravitz’s performance in The Batman then added, “Mahalo to the fans and press for being generous and giving us space for the children. It’s hard enough separating in the public eye.”
11.
In 2015, Perrie Edwards’s four-year relationship with her then-fiancé, Zayn Malik, ended. Appearing on The Jonathan Ross Show the following year, she said, “For a normal girl to go through something like that, it’s hard. I think when the whole world is looking at it and talking about it, you feel a bit [affected by it].”
12.
Madelyn Cline dated her Outer Banks costar Chase Stokes from 2020-2021. In 2023, she told Cosmopolitan, “My thing is, I don’t owe anyone an explanation. I am a really private person. There’s a part of me that is for me and nobody else. But in hindsight, duh, making my relationship public made it everybody else’s business. And I realized the negative side effects of that while going through the breakup, realizing I had let people in and then felt like I couldn’t get anybody out.”
He addressed the split for the first time in his Saturday Night Live monologue.
14.
After a whirlwind engagement and six-month marriage [including a wedding that was featured on The Kardashians], Lukas Gage and Chris Appleton divorced in 2023. Appearing on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen in early 2024, Lukas said, “I had a manic episode for six months. Those furry jackets…I don’t know what literally went through my head, but we live, and we learn.”
15.
Shakira‘s 11-year relationship with Gerard Piqué ended in 2022, leading to lots of intense, messy speculation and the singer’s record-smashing diss track, “Shakira: BZRP Music Sessions, Vol. #53.”
In 2024, Shakira told Rolling Stone, “I started to see that my fans were there for me. We’re in a society that’s used to seeing women confront pain in a submissive way, and I think that’s changed.”
16.
Following the end of their seven-year engagement in 2020, Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis went through a custody battle.
Olivia told Variety, “It was my workplace. In any other workplace, it would be seen as an attack. It was really upsetting. It shouldn’t have been able to happen. There was a huge breach in security, which is really scary…I hated that this nastiness distracted from the work of so many different people and the studio that I was up there representing.”
17.
In 2005, Sienna Miller performed in As You Like It on West End seven times a week while her then-fiancé Jude Law’s cheating scandal played out across the tabloids. In 2020, she told the Daily Beast, “That was one of the most challenging moments I hope I’ll ever have to experience. Because with that level of public heartbreak, to have to get out of a bed let alone stand in front of 800 people every night, it’s just the last thing you want to do. It was really hard.”
18.
Pete Davidson and Ariana Grande had an infamous whirlwind engagement in 2018. The following year, she told Vogue he’d been an “amazing distraction.” So, in his Netflix stand-up special Alive from New York, Pete said, “Can you imagine if I did that? My career would be over tomorrow. If I spray-painted myself brown and hopped on the cover of Vogue magazine and just started shitting on my ex.”
19.
And finally, The Real Housewives of Atlanta star Porscha Williams was married to Kordell Stewart from 2011-2013. She found out about their split on social media. The year of their divorce, she told ABC News, “I literally was lying in bed, and I looked at Twitter, and it was going crazy. I saw on Twitter that my husband has filed for divorce.”
