Celebrities Who Married Rich and Disappeared

That's a long Hollywood tradition: beautiful actresses marrying wealthy men in the industry (studio heads, etc.) or outside. Jennifer Jones is a good example: a stunningly attractive (if only moderately talented) actress who married producer David O.Selznick and then industrialist Norton Simon, who was a billionaire. She was already working less by the time of her first marriage.

Smart girl, that Jennifer Jones. She's mostly forgotten today but was a big deal back in her day.

DL fave Renee Russo didn't disappear entirely, but her career waned as her screenwriter/director husband's was taking off.

Most actresses will always find fewer opportunities as they get older. It's just an unpleasant reality of the biz. It's still better for most men.

You reply to yourself a lot

R2 Did any of that guy's movies do well, though? She was one of the hottest names of the 90s, and you contend that she left all that behind to live off the fortune of the guy who wrote "Freejack?"

Not that she was a big actress but Alice Evans stopped working after she married Ioan Gruffud.

Jami Gertz’s husband only became extremely wealthy after they married. Someone who better fits this bill is Ellen Barkin.

Sophia Loren's career really took off after she got with Carlo Ponti, so she's the inverse of this.

I kind of want to put Phoebe Cates in this category, though I don’t think Kevin Kline amassed that much wealth at the time. But she seemed to abandon acting quite quickly once she had the chance.

I don’t know how famous he was before, but Greg Berlanti’s husband was a soccer player who seemed to give it all up to be a stay at home dad in a sport that you can play longer then most. By comparison David Burtka seemed to stop getting jobs and give up.

[quote]Smart girl, that Jennifer Jones. She's mostly forgotten today but was a big deal back in her day.

I acted her right off the screen.

Salma Hayek

I just watched a documentary on Chaplin, Oona O’Neil, a celebratory daughter already, barely had an acting career before she completely dropped out, married a very much older Chaplin and had eight kids with him. Apparently she wrote extensively during her whole life, but insisted it all be burned.

Other examples:

Greer Garson

Merle Oberon

AJ Langer (Rayanne from "My So-Called Life"; now the Countess of Devon)

Surprised no one has brought up Grace Kelly yet.

R1 Selznick was Jennifer Jones’s second husband. First was Robert Walker. She broke his heart.

Salma Hayek didn't disappear after marrying the billionaire; she has been in quite a few films/TV shows.

Eliza Dushku

Surprised no one has said Catherine Zeta Jones?

R18 How can we? Her killer pussy keeps giving people throat cancer!

I don't know if this counts as a celebrity, as she was more a steadily working character actress, but Margaret Whitton, who was in the "Major League" movies and also worked a lot onstage, was married to Bear Stearns executive Warren Spector (who had been widely tipped to become the next CEO of the firm, had it not crashed and burned).

After she married Spector, she basically didn't have to do shit until she died in 2016.

June Haver retired after marrying the extremely wealthy Fred MacMurray.

Debra Paget left the entertainment industry in 1964 after marrying Ling C. Kung (孔令傑) on April 19, 1962. Kung was a Chinese-American oil industry executive. His parents were banker and politician H. H. Kung and businesswoman Soong Ai-ling. Through his father, he was a descendant of Confucius. His maternal aunts were Soong Mei-ling, wife of Chiang Kai-shek and First Lady of the Republic of China, and political figure Soong Ching-ling. Paget and Kung had one son, Gregory Teh-chi Kung. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1980.

Jean Peters retired after marrying Howard Hughes.

Wouldn't Grace Kelly own this thread? While she didn't disappear her acting career sure did.

Phoebe Cates

You rang.

[quote]AJ Langer (Rayanne from "My So-Called Life"; now the Countess of Devon)

Love this, R13! The notion of "Rayanne Graff" growing up to be a countess is wonderful.

Bridget Fonda married Danny Elfman, had a baby, and retired. Her career had been winding down since Jackie Brown, and she was also in a car accident that left her with chronic pain.

"Celebrities Who Married Rich and Disappeared"

Well I certainly abandoned stardom and my career after marrying a British royal!

R27 What "career?"

Hayek's talent is in her chest. I truly cannot stand her.

There’s some interesting stuff about Jennifer Jones in the Jean Stein book “West of Eden” from a couple years back. She comes off quite poorly, a terrible mother and sheltered head case. A detail that sticks with me is that once ensconced in wealth, she would never leave her bedroom and refuse all visitors, including her kids, until 6 pm, at which point she’d make a brief appearance for dinner in full evening regalia.

A lot former supermodels retired after marrying well (Yasmeen Ghuari, Claudia Schiffer, Elaine Irwin)

Emmy Rossum and Michelle Pfieffer essentially cut back on acting after marrying superproducers (Sam Esmail and David E Kelly respectively)

Jules Asner (gave up decent entertainment reporting gig after marrying Steven Soderbergh)

Brad Hall (he and Julia Louis Dreyfus were on equal footing career-wise when they got married...but he seems content out of the spotlight and supporting his billionaire heiress wife)

Eve (former singer--still does The Talk I guess, but she quit performing after marrying her multimillionaire husband)

Kate Capshaw and Amy Irving (one upon marrying Steven Spielberg, and the other upon divorcing Stephen Spielberg...thanks to a $100M+ settlement)

Betty Bronson married Ludwig Lauerhoff, Jr. and retired from the screen. Then she had a comeback as an old lady in character parts.

I loved Capshaw as Willy in the Temple of Doom movie her husband directed. I don't care what people say, she was entertaining, although the movie was pretty gross in parts.

Yeah, she was great R33.

It does seem like both of Spiepberg's wives put their careers on the back-burner upon marrying him. Hopefully it was by choice...although the way he tried to cheat Amy Irving out of her settlement indicates he's not the greatest guy. Lucky for her the judge decided in her favor.

Calista Flockhart

Mia Sara. First she married Sean Connery's son then, after she divorced him, Jim Henson's son.

Eve did not stop working. She was on several tv shows.

I gave up my acting career, and married perhaps not rich per se, but I did live in a nice mansion in DC for awhile.

R38 Well it certainly wasn’t a nice mansion in Sacramento.

Bond girl and Gatsby star Lois Chiles had a good enough career going when William Paley ensconced her as his mistress for many years.

In Chile's case, when that ended, she tried to make a comeback. Didn't really work.

Portia

Australian tv actress Kyle Travis

Nope, Portia continued to work for many years after her marriage.

Susan Saint James

R26 I think that Bridget Fonda's son is special needs and she curtailed her acting.

Jamie Lee Curtis - (Lord) Christopher Guest

Elle Macpherson - Arpad Busson, Jeffrey Soffer

Anita Pallenberg, Patti Hanson - Keith Richards

Tina Turner - Erwin Bach

I’m still waiting for Colin Jost to quit his day job.

Diana Ross married that Swedish multimillionaire for a good long while.

Doesn’t Jackie O own this thread? I’m still not sure if she even loved Onassis, she just seemed to marry him to be able to disappear from the public eye and have financial security.

Oliver Elfman looks normal enough in this picture.

R49 Jackie O never had a career of her own until her final years. She wasn't an actress or model who married into money. She was born into money, married into a richer and hornier family, and after her husband got his brains blow'd out, she married an even richer old man who died soon after and left her a modest cash settlement.

Well, I for one, continued to work despite my rich husband. I wanted to give it up, but I had to think of the fans.

Jolene Blalock, T'Pol from Enterprise married the guy who owns Live Nation and disappeared.

R50 He is rumored to be autistic.

Tina Turner retired after a career of nearly 60 years.

Jessica Alba. Married up, sort of left acting and now owns her own company.

QUITE RIDICULOUS AND IGNORANT THREAD OPENER.

Salma Hayek hasn't disappeared at all. She's working all the time, steadily.

PLEASE stop being stupid pulling shitty statements straight out of your asses to start threads.

@r30, That is very odd, because Robert Wagner said almost the exact same thing about Norma Shearer

"Norma was in bed, where, I was given to understand, she spent quite a bit of time so that on those occasions when she worked or went out in public she would look as rested as possible. "

" Years later I would be with her and Martin Arrouge, her second husband, at Sun Valley. No matter who the nominal hostess was, Norma was always the queen, and no matter what time the party was to begin, Norma was always late, because she would sit for hours—hours!—to do her makeup, then make the grand entrance. "

Jackie Kennedy was one of the biggest celebrities on the world stage R51, and she married one of the richest men in the world and disappeared, she fits the three criteria perfectly!

Hayek continues to make 1-4 movies EVERY YEAR. She is a frequent guest on talk shows promoting these projects. She is everywhere on the VIP party and benefit circuit.

FUCK THIS SHIT. Words matter.

R59 But that's not the question I asked, at all. I asked about people who had a career and fame, then married rich, then disappeared or retired from that which made them famous.

1) Jackie wasn't a celebrity (nationally or globally) when she married Jack. She didn't become famous until his campaign for the presidency. She was a debutante and into the horsey set, but she wasn't Grace Kelly or Jessica Alba.

2) Jackie married one of the world's wealthiest men, but certainly did not disappear. She remained a vocal activist for the arts and historic preservation for the remainder of her life.

3) She also worked as a book editor later in life, in part for money but mainly to keep her mind active and contribute something to a world she valued.

@r49, "Doesn’t Jackie O own this thread? I’m still not sure if she even loved Onassis"

Hahahahaha!

How could any woman resist that hunka, hunka, stud Onassis?

R4 He started directing in 2014, and the three films he's directed have all gotten critical acclaim. One netted an Oscar nomination for Denzel Washington (Roman J. Israel, Esq.), and he gave his wife perhaps the best role she's ever had in Nightcrawler.

R62 She married Ari for his money, plain and simple. She knew it, his family knew it, and the whole world seemed okay with it.

After Bobby got plugged in the groceries in '68, she apparently decided America was too sick and too dangerous for her family, and shacked up with this longtime society friend who had the means to keep her safe overseas. And when Ari died a few years later, she didn't inherit too much (Greek estate law was apparently VERY harsh on trophy wives), and moved back to New York a wealthy widow.

Janet Jones married NHL superstar Wayne Gretzky at the height of his career. The wedding was broadcast live in Canada. They went on to have five kids, including the untalented Pauline. I don't think worked again.

Quite a few vintage Hollywood actresses married rich and quit show business (even if they didn't "disappear"). I can think of Jane Bryan (Mrs. Justin Dart) and Ginny Simms (Mrs. Hyatt Van Dehn).

Deanna Durbin

Deanna married Jesus.

My bad that was Delores Hart who married Jesus.

It occurs to me that if Judy Garland had been colder and smarter, she could have made Minnelli into the breadwinner husband she needed. He became one of the go-to directors for MGM in the 50s and 60s, and she could have retired early and continued playing his happy beard while having lovers on the side.

Evan Lysacek!

^ owns this thread!

R11, I agree with Salma Hayek.

She married rich, and you NEVER hear from her anymore.

Jane Fonda while she was married to Ted Turner.

Ironically, Fonda was underwriting her second husband's political ambitions throughout the 70s and 80s, despite the fact that Tom Hayden was a controlling pig who didn't even treat her that well.

James Brolin

Elizabeth Berkley married Ralph Lauren's nephew Greg. Her career was pretty much over after Showgirls though

Gene Tierney is another. She married Texas oil baron W. Howard Lee (former husband of Hedy Lamarr), in 1960 and moved to Texas. She hadn't done a film since 1955 by the time she married him.

Lara Flynn Boyle is married to some rich Texan.

Bonita Granville of Now Voyager.

R58 " Norma was always the queen."

What am I Bobby chopped liver?

R75 Tom Hayden is disturbed. He stood up at his son's (the one he shares with Jane) wedding to a Black woman and praised their marriage as "advancing [Tom's] lifelong goal of the destruction of the white race."

"Destruction of the white race." He said that shit, out loud, to a room full of wedding guests and his newlywed son and daughter-in-law.

Um, Grace Kelly? Kind of owns this thread.

Paulette Goddard

Former Aussie soap starlet and wanna be Kylie pop puppet, Holly Valance...

From Wikipedia...

On 29 September 2012, Valance married billionaire English property developer Nick Candy in Beverly Hills, California.[24][25] In November 2013, Valance gave birth in London to their first child, a daughter.[26] In September 2017, they had a second daughter.

R54 What makes everyone say he's autistic?

Eddie Cibrian

Michelle Pfieffer

Hayek works a lot more now because of the diversity mandates. But does anyone love anything she’s done lately?!

Traci Lind! And I wish Salma went away… Her 5mins in House of Gucci are funny though. That’s what she’s good for IMO, she is not a serious actress.

R1 Talk about beating a dead horse. Smart girl hah? Shouldn’t she have married for love? You decrepit old witch.

R77 That screams bisexual couple.

R79 Who would marry HER? How rich, what’s his story?

R89 She was fun in House of Gucci as the crazy fake psychic.

Adele Astaire owns this thread. International stage star when she appeared with brother Fred, she left it all behind to become Lady Cavendish in 1932. Though frequently offered plum roles, such as the original “Annie Get Your Gun,” she never went back to performing.

For her the theatrical life had always been “an acquired taste… like olives.”

“Hayek works a lot more now because of the diversity mandates. But does anyone love anything she’s done lately?!”

Hayek has zero talent. Her filmography is filled with mostly crappy movies.

Fred and Adele Astaire were pushed into performing at an early age. It's possible she never liked it or the life of a performer, with the constant travel and harassment at the hands of sleazy executives. Becoming Lady Cavendish was probably a blessed escape for her.

Martha Hyer's 2 husbands included Hal B. Wallis. A family member was her decorator in Beverly Hills in the 1960's and she told him "too bad you are not 60 and Jewish, they know how to treat a lady".

The late Yvette Mimieux married real estate executive Howard Ruby in the mid-'80s. Their Bel Air estate went up for sale last year for $45 million.

What about Elizabeth McGovern? Disappeared for a long time until popping back up in downton abbey. At least in the states. Married some English guy in involved in show business.

McGovern may have gotten another part recently but dismay mean she’s even a ‘decent’ actress.

Salma Hayek did not stop working. She has kept pretty busy. I think she's living exactly the life she wants.

Lots of actresses can score in the right part (and with solid direction and writing).

Elizabeth McGovern never impressed me that much, but she was sweet and appealing in ORDINARY PEOPLE (even if outclassed by MTM and Dinah Manhoff in a tiny role, IMHO). I found McGovern inane and irritating on DOWNTON ABBEY, though.

Hayek was very funny on 30 ROCK in a recurring role, and I liked a lot about FRIDA. That's an interesting mess of a movie.

I don't think either of them is a particularly brilliant actor, at any rate.

R61, Jackie did not work for money. Her longtime companion Maurice Tempelsman, business whiz, took her relatively modest wealth and invested it on her behalf. She ended up with over $200 million. She worked because she enjoyed it and did a very good job for the publishing house.

OK, she hasn't "yet) disappeared, as such, but Barrett Swatek was in Season One of Yellowstone and has had a small string of forgettable roles in films like "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and one of the Power Rangers movies, and she just listed her Malibu beachfront property for $99.5 million.

She is the 2nd wife of hedge-fund guy Adam Weiss (founder of Scout Capital Mgmt and some other fund that has also since shut down).

Jolene Blalock who was on Star Trek Enterprise. She's married to the guy who owns Live Nation.

Amy Irving was only married to Spielberg for four years and walked away with $100 million.

FOUR years!

Gotta give a bitch credit where credit's due.