Celebrity Age Gaps That Proved Controversial
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Vote up the age gaps that make you raise an eyebrow.
Love comes in many different forms, even having the power to transcend the cultural (and sometimes legal) parameters of what society considers “the norm.” Whether these celebrity couples initially made headlines because they met on set, had multiple goes as an on-again-off-again famous pair, or were an unlikely match for other reasons, they all have one distinctive trait in common: the age gap was so significant that it proved controversial.
While some seemed to make it work despite their age differences, others found themselves tied in legal battles years later over their past relationships.
- Photo:
- Maurice Seymour
- Wikimedia Commons
- Public domain
When Jerry Lee Lewis first arrived at Heathrow Airport in May 1958, reporters were surprised to note that the “Great Balls of Fire” vocalist had a young girl at his side. The press asked who she was, and they were startled by her reply: “I'm Myra… Jerry's wife.” Just before the tour, Lewis (then 22) had secretly married his 13-year-old first cousin, Myra Gale Brown.
Hoping to elevate the legal concerns that would undoubtedly follow, the couple pretended that she was 15 so that they could be somewhat legally wed (Lewis was also still legally bound to his second wife at the time). When the newlywed couple repeated the lie to the British press, they were met with outrage instead of acceptance. In the UK, 15 was still under the legal age to marry.
Despite attempting to come back to the public eye's good graces by marrying Brown publicly later, the unsettling news all but ruined Lewis's career as a performer. Years later, Myra came forward with allegations that Lewis had committed adultery and abused her throughout their tumultuous marriage.
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Illegal in the United States but considered of age in their native France, Maïwenn Le Besco was only 16 when she married 32-year-old French film producer Luc Besson. Though the couple waited until Le Besco was considered an adult to be legally wed, the duo first met when Besson was 29 and she was 12.
According to Maïwenn (who now goes by her first name only), Besson's film Leon: The Professional was based on their relationship. The film's plotline centers around a 12-year-old girl (Natalie Portman) who is rescued by a professional hitman (Jean Reno) after her family is murdered.
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- Gage Skidmore
- Wikimedia Commons
- CC-BY-SA 3.0
When Steven Tyler first began dating Julia Holcomb, he was 27 and she was 16. The Aerosmith frontman was even awarded guardianship over his young girlfriend so that she could live with him and go on tours with the band during their three-year relationship that began in 1973.
In his memoir, Tyler admitted:
[I] almost took a teen bride… her parents fell in love with me, signed a paper over for me to have custody, so I wouldn’t get arrested if I took her out of state. I took her on tour with me…
She was sixteen, she knew how to nasty… With my bad self being twenty-six and she barely old enough to drive and sexy as hell, I just fell madly in love with her. She was a cute skinny little tomboy dressed up as Little Bo Peep. She was my heart’s desire, my partner in crimes of passion.
In her 2022 lawsuit against the “Sweet Emotion” vocalist, Holcomb's lawyer argued:
[She] was powerless to resist… [Tyler's] power, fame and substantial financial ability… [he] coerced and persuaded [the] Plaintiff into believing this was a “romantic love affair.”
Holcomb (now Julia Misley) clarified:
I want this action to expose an industry that protects celebrity offenders, to cleanse and hold accountable an industry that both exploited and allowed me to be exploited for years, along with so many other naïve and vulnerable kids and adults…
Because I know that I am not the only one who suffered abuse in the music industry, I feel it is time for me to take this stand and bring this action, to speak up and stand in solidarity with the other survivors.
In April 2023, Tyler retaliated by responding to the claims, maintaining that the relationship shared between himself and Holcomb had been consensual.
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Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, who were married and divorced twice throughout their time together as a couple, first met on the set of The Harrad Experiment when Griffith was only 14 and Johnson was 22. Griffin's mother, Tippi Hedren, also starred in the film and recognized right away that her daughter had fallen for the much older man.
Her motherly instincts were proven correct, as Griffith later recalled when she first met the Miami Vice star:
We were in the stairwell of this Anheuser-Busch Estate waiting for a setup… We started chitchatting. I thought he was the most beautiful person I'd ever seen.
Hedren added:
[I was in] sheer panic… How do you handle that? There was a very strong attachment between the two of them.
The unlikely couple moved in together when Griffith was only 15, became engaged on her 18th birthday, and were married just four years after their chance meeting in 1972.
Despite their commitment to one another, Johnson showed no embarrassment in admitting that Griffith had not been his only interest the night of their wedding:
I had been with [ex-Miss World] Marjorie Wallace most of the night… Melanie called at about 4 or 5 in the morning. We professed undying love and flew to Las Vegas and got married.
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Jerry Seinfeld and Shoshanna Lonstein first met at Central Park in 1993. At the time, he was 38, and she was 17. Lonstein gave Seinfeld her number that day, and the two shared a four-year relationship before calling it quits.
Despite their known relationship status, Seinfeld insisted that there was nothing sexual between the two of them until Lonstein turned 18. When Howard Stern first brought up the subject during an interview with Seinfeld, the radio host quipped:
So, you sit in Central Park and have a candy bar on a string and pull it when the girls come?
To which Seinfeld replied, “She’s not 17, definitely not.” However, Seinfeld seemed to contradict himself on the same show a few months later when he admitted:
I didn’t realize she was so young… This is the only girl I ever went out with who was that young. I wasn’t dating her. We just went to a restaurant, and that was it.
Years after their relationship was confirmed, Seinfeld finally recognized their relationship for what it was:
I am not an idiot. Shoshanna is a person, not an age… She is extremely bright. She’s funny, sharp, very alert. We just get along. You can hear the click….
When I like someone, I don’t care about her race, creed or national origin. If I like her, I don’t care. I don’t discriminate. If she’s 18, if she’s intelligent, that’s fine.
Understand the controversy?When Dane Cook and his girlfriend of six years, Kelsi Taylor, tied the knot in 2023, the comedian professed his love for her in an X (formerly Twitter) post:
Last night I married the girl of my dreams here in Hawaii… The greatest feeling in the world is knowing you've got the strongest person you could ever imagine by your side and giving them all of your love in return… The years of laughs, adventures and accomplishments we've shared were solidified in front of some of our dearest friends and family during an emotional ceremony. I can't wait to share more but for now just know this. I've never felt this way. It's so wonderful.
However, many fans, critics, and other celebrities found the relationship timeline offputting, considering that the two began dating when Cook was 45 and Taylor was 18.
The couple reportedly met at a game night hosted by Cook when she was 17 and waited until she was of age to consider their relationship “official.”
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When tabloids first suspected in 2004 that Disney Channel star Hilary Duff and Good Charlotte's Joel Madden were a couple, she was 16 and he was 25.
The two weren't officially photographed as a couple until 2005 - two months before Duff's 18th birthday, but the Lizzie McGuire star later admitted that she and Madden had been an item years before the publicized event.
Despite their illegal age gap, tabloids of the era were more concerned with their differing outward appearances. The unlikely duo made the cover of Teen People's “Love Issue,” where Duff spoke out about the most pressing issue regarding their relationship at the time:
You're automatically prejudging us because Joel has tattoos or I have blonde hair… He has tattoos, so he's bad, I smile all the time so I'm perfect…
We're on the same level, even though he's so much older… Joel is the most respectful boyfriend I've ever had. We had five or six dates before we even kissed.
Fans and critics of the couple were also more interested in their seemingly obvious personality differences than their respective ages, as a Paper magazine Google search proved that the legality of their relationship received very few acknowledgments.
Still, that didn't stop Joel Madden from recognizing the seriousness of the situation, claiming that if he had a 16-year-old daughter, he would never let her date a 25-year-old man.
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- George R. Fry, Los Angeles Times
- Wikimedia Commons
- CC-BY 4.0
Elvis and his eventual wife, Priscilla, met at a party In Germany he threw while he was enlisted in the Army. Despite being only 14, Priscilla found that she and the 24-year-old “Jailhouse Rock” vocalist had much in common.
In 2023, she reflected on their relationship, marriage, and eventual divorce:
It was very difficult for my parents to understand that Elvis would be so interested in me and why… And I really do think it was because I was more of a listener. Elvis would pour his heart out to me in every way in Germany. His fears, his hopes, the loss of his mother, which he never, ever got over. And I was the person who really, really sat there to listen and to comfort him… Even though I was 14, I was actually a little bit older in life. Not in numbers. That was the attraction…
People think, “Oh, it was sex"… Not at all. I never had sex with him. He was very kind, very soft, very loving, but he also respected the fact I was only 14 years old. We were more in line in thought, and that was our relationship. I don’t know why he put so much trust in me, but he did…
[After the divorce], we still remained very close. We had our daughter [Lisa Marie], and I made sure he saw her all the time. It was like we never left each other.
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Actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson and film director Sam Taylor-Wood (now Sam Taylor-Johnson) first met when he auditioned for Nowhere Boy in 2008. Though their respective ages at the time aren't confirmed, Aaron was either 18 or 19, and Sam was 42.
Having just split from her husband of 11 years, Sam was packing her belongings in her home the day that Aaron was scheduled to audition for the part of John Lennon in the biopic. In lieu of returning to the set for the experience, Sam had Aaron come to her home to stake his claim for the part.
The two hit it off, officially tying the knot in 2012. The unlikely couple has two biological daughters and two daughters from Sam's previous marriage to art dealer Jay Jopling.
Aaron has spoken of the day they met, and the harsh criticism the couple receives:
I remember it very, very clearly… I know exactly what she was wearing. This white shirt that she still has, that I love. It definitely changed my life, though not in the way I expected…
When I met Sam I'd already lived a life far beyond that of most of my contemporaries – I didn't relate to anyone my age. I just feel that we're on the same wavelength…
And a year to the minute after we met, exactly one year to the minute, I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me… I knew instantly that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this person…
I knew I wanted a family with her, I knew I wanted kids, and a month later she was pregnant with our first child.
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As a rule-breaker and norm-pusher, Madonna has made headlines for her life choices numerous times throughout her extensive career. One of the most recent controversial moments was when the pop star, then 64, began dating 23-year-old model Andrew Darnell.
The couple intentionally made headlines with their Paper Magazine photo shoot. While the pictures featured Madonna kissing Darnell on the mouth and licking his nipple, it wasn't until the pair were caught smooching in a nightclub that fans began to believe there was more to their relationship.
Their relationship lasted five months, with the split leaving Madonna in what an insider described as a “crisis of confidence.”
Understand the controversy?- 11
Mary-Kate Olsen Was In A Long-Term Relationship With Olivier Sarkozy, A French Banker Nearly Twice Her Age
The world was shocked when the usually camera-shy, then 25-year-old Mary-Kate Olsen was snapped alongside 42-year-old French banker Olivier Sarkozy at a New York Nicks game in 2012. As tabloids shared pictures of the couple intimately chatting as Sarkozy lovingly played with Olsen's hair, the rumors of their relationship came to fruition.
The couple were eventually wed, but Olsen filed for divorce a few months into the 2020 Covid pandemic. According to the legal papers, Sarkozy had chosen not to renew the $29,000 per month lease on their shared apartment and had moved his ex-wife and children into Olsen and Sarkozy's home in Long Island.
Understand the controversy? Zach Braff and Florence Pugh were first spotted together walking the streets of New York hand-in-hand in 2019. The couple dealt with extensive heckling over their age difference from when they were first captured on camera to their ultimate split in 2023.
While Braff was 44 when the two made their relationship official, Pugh was 23. The two-decade age difference became a common argument that the couple regularly defended in interviews and on social media.
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Actor Chris Evans and girlfriend Alba Baptisa tied the knot on September 9, 2023, but the nuptials were not celebrated by all corners of the internet. Some online commenters dubbed the 16-year gap between Evans (42) and Baptisa (26) “icky,” with one going so far as to say they thought Baptista “was [Evans's] daughter.”
The Daily Beast called out this kind of language - particularly those labeling her a “child bride” - as being overblown. Writer Kayleigh Donaldson wrote,
when two consenting adults face cries of grooming because one is in their mid-20s, it feels like something has gone very wrong in our wider understanding of consent.
Since getting hitched, Evans reported that he and Baptista have been “relaxing and enjoying life and reflecting.”
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