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Ah, the 1980s. The decade of Back to the Future and, apparently, of the most scandalous celebrity romances in show business history. Good heavens! Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson are practically Hollywood royalty. However, their relationship didn't exactly get off to the best start. They met on the set of their ABC series, Bosom Buddies, in 1981, when both actors were taking their first steps as young stars. Wilson appeared as a guest on an episode and instantly connected with Hanks, who at the time was married to his college girlfriend, Samantha Lewis. Although their relationship was apparently platonic at first, the spark
ignited in 1985 when Hanks and Wilson starred in their first film together, Volunteers. In a 2006 Esquire article, Hanks noted that the film's exotic setting and the experience of connecting with Wilson were the ideal backdrop for the start of their romance. He said, "It turns out I was married at the time, and there's nothing to celebrate about that, but the reality is it was a young and difficult marriage. I asked Rita if it was something real for her, and she simply couldn't deny it." Hanks and Wilson married in 1988 and are still together to this day. To be fair, Rob Lowe's romance with actress Melissa Gilbert and the drama that arose during their relationship wasn't his biggest controversy in the 1980s. His infamous
1988 tape scandal caused a media firestorm in both mainstream and tabloid media. Prior to this headline-grabbing moment, Lowe was in a romantic relationship with Gilbert for six years, from 1981 to 1987. Unfortunately, their union was plagued by infidelity. Lowe is said to have cheated on Gilbert with his Hotel New Hampshire co-star Nastassja Kinski, as well as other famous women. Joan Rivers even famously confronted him live on The Tonight Show after seeing him in public with another woman. Meanwhile , Gilbert cheated on Lowe with his friend John Cusack. She later spoke about this troubled period in an appearance on I Choose Me. I think I learned a lot about what didn't work for me, actually.
Mhm. And what I would not tolerate later on. One of Hollywood's most famous power couples in the 1970s and 1980s, Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Huston had an on-again, off-again relationship for much of two decades, from 1973 to 1990. In her second memoir, Watch Me, Huston spoke at length about her relationship with Nicholson. According to her account, it was a winding saga full of jealousy, grand gestures and bad behavior, among which she highlighted that Nicholson admired other women in front of her and even accepted their advances. This troubled couple was pushed to the limit in the late 1980s, when Nicholson's affair with Rebecca Broussard, a woman 12 years younger than Huston, resulted in a pregnancy and eventually a daughter.
Nicholson confessed the situation in 1989, while Huston was rehearsing for Stephen Frears' film, The Grifters, during a dinner at his house. According to Huston's memoirs, Nicholson ended the meal by telling him, "Someone's going to have a baby." And immediately, Huston knew that someone was Broussard. She wrote that she asked Nicholson if he planned to stay with Broussard, and when he said yes, she replied, "There's only room for one of us in this story, and I'm going to retire." Shortly afterwards, an article about Nicholson's affair was published in Playboy, which caused him and Huston to break up for good. By the late 1980s,
Lionel Richie had already transcended his role as the frontman of the Commodores to become a true pop culture icon. He was one of the masterminds behind We Are the World and topped the charts with solo hits such as Endless Love, All Night Long, Hello and more. At that time, Richie and his college girlfriend, Brenda Harvey, were still married. They were also raising their daughter, Nicole. Unfortunately, their seemingly idyllic family life changed forever after Richie began a relationship with his future wife, Diane Alexander, in 1986. As Richie recounted in his memoirs, Harvey suspected something was amiss and followed him to Alexander's apartment in Beverly Hills. She knocked on the door and quickly learned the
truth. Richie wrote in his memoirs: "When the door opens, Brenda is standing there. There's a massive confrontation. Diane is in total shock and I try to leave to get Brenda away. It's the most horrible screaming match of my life and it all happens in this tiny hallway." According to Richie, he left the scene expecting Brenda to follow him, but the confrontation broke out again. Finally, the police had to intervene and charges were soon filed. Richie added: "The most painful part, the tragedy of our lives, was that Brenda was heartbroken, and I understand that. Ladies and gentlemen, I understand that." The production of another
Stephen Frears film would serve as the backdrop for another infamous infidelity scandal of the late 1980s, specifically the 1988 period drama, Dangerous Liaisons, an adaptation of the 1782 French novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses, starring John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer. Your happiness is much more important to me than my own. That's what I mean when I tell you I love you. Both Malkovich and Pfeiffer were married during the production of the film. Malkovich with actress Glenne Headly and Pfeiffer with Peter Horton. In the film, Malkovich plays an evil aristocrat who tries to seduce and break the heart of a debutante played
by Pfeiffer as part of a revenge plot, and their intense on- screen chemistry supposedly reflected something very real that was happening between Malkovich and Pfeiffer behind the scenes. Details of the romance are hard to find even today and Pfeiffer has never publicly acknowledged the situation, but it coincided with the breakup of both stars' marriages. For his part, Malkovich has spoken about the romance at least once. It's not something I really talk about. Speaking on Bella Freud's Fashion Neurosis podcast in 2025, he lamented that the affair he was involved in with Pfeiffer had ruined their professional relationship. Until 2011, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver
enjoyed one of the longest-lasting celebrity marriages of the time. On May 17 of that year, however, it was revealed that Schwarzenegger had fathered a child out of wedlock 14 years earlier with his family's former housekeeper. And although the revelation of Schwarzenegger's love life erupted into a scandal and culminated in divorce, it wasn't actually the first time he had been unfaithful to Shriver. Back in 1985, while still dating Shriver and enjoying the wave of fame from Terminator, Schwarzenegger starred in the fantasy and science fiction film Red Sonja alongside newcomer Brigitte Nielsen. Nielsen played the main character in the film while Schwarzenegger was Conan's stand-in, Lord Kalidor. And
while the two were showing off their impressive physiques on screen, things were apparently getting intense off-camera. Nielsen spoke about the romance in 2011 amid the Schwarzenegger out-of-wedlock son scandal, telling the Daily Mail: "Since we both knew it wouldn't last beyond the film, we didn't hold back." He never spoke about her, and the way he lived his life with me made me feel like I was the only one. Then I found out about him and Maria and, boy, did I feel cheated." Schwarzenegger himself addressed this affair during a 2012 interview with 60 Minutes, when Leslie Stahl suggested he didn't seem to feel bad about it in his memoir. Schwarzenegger responded, "Yeah, I did feel bad about it, but all my different things, they were
mistakes and, you know, my failings, my blunders. " The infamous separation of then-Prince Charles and Princess Diana, as well as Charles's extramarital affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, was tabloid fodder worldwide during the mid- 1990s. However, Charles and Camilla's love story actually stretches back to the 1980s and beyond. They first met at a polo match at Windsor Great Park in 1970 and began dating soon after. However, Charles was later drafted into the Royal Navy, while Camilla married Andrew Parker Bowles. Fast forward to 1981 and Charles He married Diana in what was dubbed the wedding of the century. They had two sons together, Prince William and Prince Harry.
However, Charles's feelings for Camilla remained as strong as ever. During a 1994 interview with biographer Jonathan Dimbleby, Charles appeared to admit to having rekindled his romance with Camilla sometime in 1986. "I 've always tried to do the right thing, tried to do the right thing for everyone," he said In his book Rebel King, Tom Bower reported a claim that Diana confronted Camilla when they were both at the same party in 1989. Charles was with Diana while both Parker Bowleses were already there. As the room suddenly fell silent, Diana challenged Camilla to leave Charles alone. But Camilla wouldn't budge, reportedly telling Diana that her behavior was inappropriate in a
private home. Bower added, "The Princess, she said, was in a bad position to complain." While Camilla confined herself to a single conventional relationship, Diana, her friends told her, was " dating the lifeguards." Eventually, of course, Charles and Diana divorced. Diana died in a car crash in 1997, and the future king married his future queen. However, the damage the affair caused to Charles's reputation and the royal family as a whole is still felt today. Sting's long relationship with actress and producer Trudie Styler also began on a somewhat scandalous note. Styler first saw Sting when he was still in his starved-for-artist phase as the frontman of The Police, before the band's big break
in 1977. At the time, he was married to actress Frances Tomelty and had a young son. Around 1980, Styler and Tomelty became friends, appearing together in a production of Macbeth. Although the precise details are murky, Sting and Styler eventually began a romance. By 1983, she was pregnant with his baby. and traveled with him as he toured the world with his band. The two eventually married, but Sting's characterization of her as his mistress led to unflattering press coverage. Today, the couple's questionable beginnings have become secondary to them. Styler once told The Guardian: "I think we've been granted a certain kind of respect."
We've simply come a long way. Having been together for 20 years in the kind of industry where marriages fail, we've been together so long we're kind of an institution. I think we've started to be seen with affection. Ozzy Osbourne was another legendary figure surrounded by a non-romantic scandal in the 1980s, specifically when he ripped the head off a real bat while performing on stage. But don't think that means he wasn't unfaithful too. In fact, Osbourne allegedly cheated on his wife, Sharon Osbourne, on several occasions during the 1980s and 1990s. In 2016, Sharon aired her dirty laundry on an episode of The Talk, revealing that her husband had cheated on her with several nannies when their children were
young. She said, "You can't put one nanny to work 7 days a week, so we had four nannies on rotation." And I tell you, they were the downfall of my existence. They all wanted to be celebrities. They all wanted money. "I caught two of them in bed with Ozzy at different times, and it just keeps going." In an effort to prevent her husband from straying again, she eventually took a different approach to ensuring their children's care. She said, "At the end of the day, I hired a nanny named Big Dave." Despite all this, however, the couple remained together until Ozzy Osbourne's death in 2025.
