10 Celebrities Who Married At Least 5 Times
Andrew Thornton Quick Links
Love and marriage do not always go together like a horse and carriage, especially in the world of celebrities. Only half of Americans get married today, which is a huge drop from 50 years ago. The decline in marriage rates and the increase in divorce rates didn't deter many celebs from taking the plunge multiple times, though. If you add up all the marriages on this list, were talking 73 marriages, most of which ended in divorce. All is not lost. Some of these celebrities found love and happiness later in life, while others ended up dying spouse-less. Either way, there’s a lot to learn from these failed marriages—such as only fools rush in.
10. Bonnie Lee Bakley, 10 Times
The model-actress was mainly known for being married to actor Robert Blake, who supposedly murdered her. She never seemed to marry for love—just money and fame. In 1971 at the age of 15, she married Greek foreigner Evangelos Paulakis so he could obtain a green card. A few weeks later she became fed up with him and had him deported. For her second husband, she kept it in the family and married her first cousin, Paul Gawron; they were married from 1977-1982 and had two kids together. Half of her marriages were annulled, including the one to Joseph Brooksher in 1992, which dissolved after one night of not-so martial bliss. Because she was obsessed with celebrities, she married Blake in 2000. Despite the couple having a child together, they didn't live together. While sitting in a car outside a restaurant in 2001, she was shot and killed. Blake went to trial for her murder but wasn't found guilty.
9. Zsa Zsa Gabor, 9 Times
The Hungarian actress and socialite once said this about her multiple marriages, “I am a marvelous housekeeper: Every time I leave a man, I keep his house.” At the young age of 20 years old in 1937, Gabor married Burhan Asaf Belge, who was 18 years older than her; the marriage lasted four years. A year later, she exchanged nuptials with Conrad Hilton and that union lasted five years. Gabor’s sister, Magda even ended up sharing a husband with her; actor George Sanders. Zsa Zsa spent five years with him in the early 1950s, but her sister’s marriage to him only lasted one month. Zsa Zsa’s only annulment was to Felipe de Alba in 1983, because she was still married to her seventh husband. In 1986, Gabor finally found a relationship that stuck and married Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt, 26 years her junior. The 97-year-old and her younger beau are still married and give new meaning to 'till death do us part'.
8. Richard Pryor, 7 Times
The standup comedian-turned-actor loved women and matrimony. Not only was he married seven times to five different women, but he also had a few relationships during the marriages and in between marriages. At 20 years old, Pryor married Patricia Price in 1960. The marriage lasted long enough (a year) for him to father one child. In 1967 he married Shelley Bonis, divorced her two years later, then married Deborah McGuire in 1977. Additionally, two out of his five wives were repeats: He was married to Jennifer Lee for a year in the early '80s, then dumped her for Flynn Belaine (1986-1987; 1990-1991). When it seemed like Pryor had run of women to love, he reconsidered his feelings for Lee and remarried her 20 years after their first wedding. They stayed together until his death in 2005, making it his most enduring marriage.
7. Lana Turner, 8 Times
Married to a motley of men, including millionaires, actors and a hypnotist, the screen siren never did have a successful marriage. As a teenager, Turner was married to bandleader, Artie Shaw for four months in 1940. Then, was love at first sight when she got hitched to Joseph Crane on their first date. She married him twice: The first marriage in 1942 was annulled because he was married to another woman, but when his divorce was finalized, Turner and Crane reconciled, remarried and divorced again. For four years in the '50s, actor Lex Barker was her husband, but Turner divorced him after finding out he sexually abused her daughter. Her eighth husband, Ronald Pellar, stole a lot of money from her; thus, the marriage ended in 1972. From then until her death in 1995, Turner refuted marriage. "My goal was to have one husband and seven children, but it turned out to be the other way around,” Turner said.
6. Martin Scorsese, 5 Times
Early on in his filmmaking career, the Oscar-winning director was able to direct successful films but not marriages. At NYU he met Laraine Marie Brennan, whom he married in 1965; that marriage dissipated in 1971. A few years later at the height of his auteurism, he married Julia Cameron. She gave birth to a daughter, but that didn’t keep them together—they divorced within a year of the nuptials. Scorsese then fell in love with actress, Isabella Rossellini and married her in 1979; unlike his divorce to Cameron, Scorsese and Rossellini amicably divorced in 1983. He only waited two years and remarried again, this time to Barbara de Fina, who produced a few of his movies during their six-year marriage. After divorcing his fourth wife in 1991, he found love again with Helen Schermerhorn Morris. The Fifth time seems to be a charm, as the couple have been happily married for over 20 years.
5. Dennis Hopper, 5 Times
The award-winning actor is best remembered for his troublesome characters on screen, but also for his wild antics off screen. Hopper managed to stay married to his first wife, fellow actress Brooke Hayward, from 1961-1969. Once that ended, he started shacking up with Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and Papas in 1970. The marriage was not only his most well-known one, but it became one of the shortest marriages in Hollywood history: a total of eight days. Rumors spread that Hopper kept his newlywed wife handcuffed during those tumultuous eight days, but later on Hopper said, “Seven of those days were pretty good. The eighth day was the bad one.” He rebounded with Daria Halprin two years later, and then waited until 1989 for another trip down the aisle when he met fourth wife, Katherine LaNasa, who was two decades younger than him. At 60 years old, he married the 29 year old Victoria Duffy in 1996. The relationship worked until 2010, when he separated from her and filed a restraining order against her. The couple was embroiled in a court battle right before he died in 2010.
4. Billy Bob Thornton, 5 Times
Thornton first walked down the aisle in 1978, when he married Melissa Lee Gatlin. They had a daughter together but subsequently divorced two years later. That didn’t sour him on marriage, though, as he married Toni Lawrence in 1986, then divorced her a year later. From 1993-1997, he was married to a Playboy Playmate named Pietra Cherniak, whom he supposedly abused. He then moved on from Cherniak to actress Laura Dern, and just when it seemed like the pair were going to get married, Angelina Jolie stole him away from Dern (sound familiar?) and the unlikely May-December couple married in 2000. Even though the union only lasted two years, they succeeded in creeping everyone out when they wore vials of each others blood around their necks. After the Jolie debacle, Thornton wised up and realized marriage wasn't his thing; instead, has been dating Connie Angland for the past ten years.
3. Larry King, 8 Times
It only took eight marriages, but love finally prevailed for the talk show host in his twilight years. His first stab at marriage came in the early '50s, when he married Freda Miller. Since he was only 18 years old, King’s parents convinced him to annul the marriage a few months later. He waited a decade to get betrothed again, when he married Annette Kaye in 1961 and had a son with her. When that marriage failed, he moved onto Alene Akins, a Playboy Playmate. They divorced two years into their marriage, and King wasted no time and immediately remarried in 1963. Realizing the Playboy Bunny was still the one, four years later in 1967, he remarried Akins, only to have the marriage end in divorce a few years later. Finally in 1997, King found the love of his life in Shawn Southwick, a singer 20 years younger than him. When she hit the ten-year anniversary mark, the seventh Mrs. King almost jinxed the marriage in saying she was the first wife to “make it to the double digits.”
2. Mickey Rooney, 8 Times
The recently deceased actor had a 90-year movie career and in the course, he was the quite the ladies man. Rooney obviously had issues with not wanting to be alone, because in his entire adult life, he never was without a wife. During the Golden Age of Hollywood, he married burgeoning actress Ava Gardner in 1942 but they divorced a year later (she would famously marry Sinatra). From then on, he went from marriage to marriage, without more than a couple of years in between weddings. He swung from a short-term marriage to actress Martha Vickers, to a six-year marriage to Elaine Devry in the '50s. He had four kids with Carolyn Mitchell but when that ended, he found comfort in Carolyn Hockett for a few years. In 1978 he met Jan Chamberlin, who was 20 years younger than him. He finally settled down with her and remained married to her until his death.
1. Elizabeth Taylor, 8 Times
The Oscar-winning beauty was infamously married eight times to seven husbands, including two failed marriages to the love of her life, Richard Burton. "I was taught by my parents that if you fall in love, if you want to have a love affair, you get married. I guess I'm very old-fashioned," Taylor once said about her marriages. Conrad Hilton Jr. was her first husband from 1950-1951. A year after the divorce, she married Michael Wilding, who was 20 years older than her. They stayed married for a few years and had two kids, but then a month after divorcing Wilding, Mike Todd came along. Of all of her husbands, he’s the only one who died during the marriage. Taylor notoriously stole Eddie Fisher from Debbie Reynolds, but that marriage went out the window when she met Richard Burton (who was also married at the time) on the set of Cleopatra. The Burton-Taylor union lasted the longest (10 years, the first time). They divorced in 1974 but remarried a year later to only have it end again. Taylor’s other husbands included Senator John Warner and construction worker Larry Fortensky, who was 20 years younger than her. After their divorce in 1996, she quit marriage and remained single until her death in 2011.
