Screen to Streets: 25 Movie Couples Who Dated in Real Life

Some stars just can't resist bringing their work home.

Complex Original

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Working on a movie set with someone every day for three months, having to act out intense chemistry, and practicing lots of choreographed sexy-time moves is a formula for real-life romance. It sure worked magically for awkward beauty Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, who star as a melodramatic, star-crossed couple in the blockbuster Twilight series. The final installment, Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part 2, hits theaters this week, and it's a good thing, too, because Pattinson and Stewart have been on the outs. In case you've been dead to the world, tabloids recently exposed Stewart's fling with director Rupert Sanders. It was a giant uh-oh for Twilight fans, but perhaps indicative of what happens when you turn your co-worker into your bed slave.

Pattinson and Stewart, a.k.a. Robsten, are only one of many couples that tool their business from fake bedrooms to real ones, so we did some research to find out how these things usually go. Some worked out, some failed miserably. It's all ahead, as Complex revisits 25 Movie Couples Who Dated In Real Life.

Written by Valeriya Safronova (@vsaffron)

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Shia LeBeouf and Megan Fox

Characters: Sam Witwicky and Mikaela Banes
Movie: The Transformers (2007), The Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

We knew for sure that the Even Stevens days were long gone when Shia LeBeouf accidentally purposely accidentally admitted to Details that he and Megan Fox had hooked up during the filming of the second Transformers movie.

In case you were underground or in outer space back in 2007, the first two parts of the franchise feature LeBeouf's Sam and Fox's Mikaela as friends-turned-lovers on a mission to save the world. Sam knows a big secret that is the planet's final hope, while Mikaela knows how to steal cars and look like a model dressed as a mechanic for Halloween.

Of course, the question on every gossip monger's lips was whether Fox had cheated on current husband, Brian Austin Green. LeBeouf's response? Repeating "I don't know" about 12 times. Who would have ever thought that the curly-haired nerd from our childhoods could get into so much trouble?

Woody Allen and Diane Keaton

Characters: Allan Felix and Linda Christie
Movie: Play It Again, Sam (1972)

If there wasn't a whole stack of movies focused almost exclusively on Woody Allen being in relationships, we might never have been to able to picture him dating a woman. Especially a hot one.

Diane Keaton and Woody Allen first met when he cast her for his Broadway show, Play It Again, Sam. In the film version of the play, Keaton's Linda and her husband are friends with Allen's character, Alan, who is going through a divorce. The affair between Allan and Linda is inevitable. After all, who is Woody Allen to deny himself a little bit of on-screen fun?

Despite staying together for only a year, Allen and Keaton continued to work together on movies and remained friends...even after he married his ex-partner Mia Farrow's adopted daughter.

Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder

Characters: Edward Scissorhands and Kim
Movie: Edward Scissorhands (1990)

When Winona Ryder and Johnny Depp first met at the Great Balls of Fire! premiere in 1989, Ryder was 17 to Depp's 27. A short while later, Ryder starred as the love interest of the famous character Edward Scissorhands, played by Depp in Tim Burton's classic outcast flick. Over the course of their real-life relationship, with which the public was obsessed, Depp not only proposed to Ryder, but also got a tattoo that said "Winona Forever." When they broke up after three years, he changed it to "Wino Forever." Good one.

Penélope Cruz and Tom Cruise

Characters: David Aames and Sofia Serrano
Movie: Vanilla Sky (2001)

Despite a history of questionable decisions—namely, Scientology and Cocktail—Tom Cruise has managed to snag women whose average hotness hovers at approximately 9.89/10. Between his divorce from Nicole Kidman and his marriage to Katie Holmes, Cruise dated the Spanish beauty Penélope Cruz.

The two met while playing star-crossed lovers in Cameron Crowe's fantastical Vanilla Sky, and officially confirmed their relationship in 2001. The details of their break-up were resurrected recently in an article in Vanity Fair, which claimed that the three-year relationship ended because Cruz refused to convert to Scientology. The story also claimed that Scientology bosses secretly tried and failed to find a new woman for Cruise. As we said: bad decisions.

Taylor Lautner and Taylor Swift

Characters: Willy and Felicia
Movie: Valentine's Day (2010)

Taylor Squared. A romance and a nickname that was so sickeningly adorable that we spent an entire three months in constant fear of regurgitating our lunch while skimming the Perez Hilton, TMZ, and Just Jared side of current events. The short-lived couple (sigh of relief) starred as a high-school pair waiting to have sex in Valentine's Day, a consistently cringe-worthy flick with a line-up that made us wonder how broke and desperate famous celebrities might be.

Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth

Characters: Ronnie Miller and Will Blakelee
Movie: The Last Song (2010)

Another couple that is just too cute for words. Gag. The superstar beloved by teenyboppers all across the country met her fiancé, Liam Hemsworth, on the set of The Last Song, yet another sappy Nicholas Sparks adaptation. In the movie, Cyrus plays a teenager with a talent for music, who is estranged from her equally talented father. Hemsworth stars opposite as the love interest whose hobbies include...rescuing turtles. The ending is a totally unexpected twist. Just kidding. Cyrus's Ronnie reconciles with her dad and gets together with Hemsworth's Will.

Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem

Characters: Maria Elena and Juan Antonio
Movie: Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

Now here is a couple we can admire. They keep their relationship under wraps. They waited a good long time to tie the knot—they first met on the set of Jamon, Jamon in 1992. And oh hey, they each have an Oscar. One of these golden bad boys belongs to Cruz for her role in the sexy Vicky Cristina Barcelona as the sultry and wild ex-wife of Juan Antonio, played by Bardem.

Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn

Characters: Brooke Meyers and Gary Grobowski
Movie: The Break-Up (2006)

We have to admit, the Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston thing threw us a bit off balance at first. After all, Vaughn always looks a little...messy. Aniston, meanwhile, rarely has a strand out of place. After getting over our initial surprise, however, we were kind of pumped. Their getting together meant that the long-debated theory that the funny man gets the hottie had been confirmed. Too bad The Break-Up, the depressing comedy in which they played a couple who split but continue to live together, spelled out their ending just as they were beginning.

Drew Barrymore and Justin Long

Characters: Erin and Garrett
Movie: Going the Distance (2010)

Like The Break-Up did for Aniston and Vaughn, the movie that brought Drew Barrymore and Justin Long together, He's Just Not That Into You, also spelled out the couple's future. Well, we don't know whether it was him or her that was just not into the other, but the point is that they were doomed from the start.

After dating for a year and then allegedly reuniting and breaking up again, the two joined forces on-screen again in Going the Distance, playing a couple who try to maintain a relationship between California and New York. East coast and West coast? We told you they were doomed.

Zoe Saldana and Bradley Cooper

Characters: Rory Jansen and Dora Jansen
Movie: The Words (2012)

Bradley Cooper has a history of dating beautiful women, including Olivia Wilde, Renee Zellweger, and Jennifer Lopez. Now, thanks to his latest movie, The Words, Cooper has gotten together with another gorgeous star, Zoe Saldana. In the movie, which is one of those stories within a story within a story, Saldana and Cooper play a fictional married couple. In reality, the two are known to have dated for three months last spring and are said to be together again. The Words seems like a neutral title, so we think these two have a chance.

Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds

Characters: Green Lantern and Carol Ferris
Movie: Green Lantern (2011)

Following a very widely discussed affair with Leonardo DiCaprio, Blake Lively seems to have grown and moved on to a quieter, more settled, and less controversial relationship with Ryan Reynolds. She's matured so much, in fact, that just two months ago she tied the knot with Reynolds in a ceremony that most paparazzi didn't even know about until after it happened. Props for class. The newlyweds starred together in Green Lantern, with Reynolds in the title role and Lively as his childhood sweetheart. At least now we know that the movie was good for one thing.

Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck

Characters: Larry Gigli and Ricki
Movie: Gigli (2003)

Let's just get the obvious out of the way. Gigli is a terrible movie. Some even go so far as to call it the worst ever in the whole entire world, since the dawn of silent film. It won a Razzie title for winning so many Razzies. Even the chemistry between Bennifer, whose relationship began on set, was a big fail.

Perhaps that was intentional, as he played a hard criminal with a gooey chocolate chip heart (...right) and she a lesbian—a full-fledged one with a girlfriend. Or maybe their lackluster attraction was caused by a whole lot of recurring pre-and post-date jitters. We'll never know.

Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise

Characters: Alice Harford and Dr. Bill Harford
Movie: Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

We'll just say it. The sexual-religious orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut, with the masks and boobs, is exactly how we imagine secret Scientology meetings to be. The creepy Stanley Kubrick movie features Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise as a married couple going through troubled times. Kidman as Alice tells Cruise as Bill that she has considered cheating on him once in the past. Ignoring the fact that thinking is far different from doing, Bill sets off on an erotic adventure marked by a series of ridiculous events. In reality, the two met on the set of 1990's Days of Thunder and were married with kids for 10 years.

Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr.

Characters: Daphne and Fred
Movie: Scooby-Doo (2002), Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004)

It's a little annoying when two people who both have such long names decide to get together. Though husband and wife Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar met and began dating on the set of I Know What You Did Last Summer, it wasn't until their 2002 movie, Scooby-Doo, that they played a couple. In contrast to their first film together, Scooby-Doo is all fun and games, with a light-hearted mystery plot directed at kids and tweens.

Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan-Tatum

Characters: Tyler Gage and Nora Clark
Movie: Step Up (2006)

As Jenna Dewan tells it, when she first met Channing Tatum on the set of Step-Up, he was ever the gentleman. Later, however, it turned out that while they ran lines alone, he had one thought on his mind: her stanking-ass breath.

In the movie, Tatum plays the boy from the wrong side of the tracks to Dewan's overprivileged prima donna in the making. It's the classic hip-hop versus modern dance dilemma. After the film was finished, the couple began dating, then married a few years later. Turns out Dewan's breath wasn't repellent after all.

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner

Characters: Daredevil and Elektra Natchios
Movie: Daredevil (2003)

Bennifer, the sequel. For once, the second part is better than the first. Or so we hope, since Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck have been married for more than seven years and have a trio of tots. The couple met on the set of Daredevil in 2003, a supremely forgettable superher o movie in which Garner played Elektra, the ex-girlfriend of Daredevil, played by Affleck. While the movie that introduced them has a certain sex appeal, Garner and Affleck seem to have quickly converted to a couple that we would never believe was über-famous if we didn't know they were über-famous.

Anna Faris and Chris Pratt

Characters: Wendy Franklin and Kyle Masterson
Movie: Take Me Home Tonight (2011)

Ah, a funny couple. So refreshing. Anna Faris and Chris Pratt met on the set of Take Me Home Tonight, a comedy in which Faris is the sister of the film's protagonist; Pratt is her boyfriend. They married a short while later, but have remained under-the-radar as a couple. A mini-Pratt-Faris arrived recently and will hopefully combine the acting chops of both and become a comedic superstar.

Dev Patel and Freida Pinto

Characters: Jamal and Latika
Movie: Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

We all know Dev Patel and Freida Pinto as Slumdog Millionaire's Jamal and Latika, a pair so in love that they mess with gangsters and sprint all across Mumbai in order to be with each other. We want to say this plot line in Danny Boyle's Oscar-winning smash is sappy, but actually, it's pretty damn good. *Some* might even call it romantic. In the real world, Patel and Pinto were making eyes at each other all throughout filming and have been dating since.

Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams

Characters: Noah and Allie
Movie: The Notebook (2004)

Another Nicholas Sparks hit. Another blow to masculinity. However, the set ofThe Notebook was also where Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams met. In the movie, the two play lovers who just keep missing each other. Their fictional romance became fantasy fodder for dreamy teenagers all over the world, which made it inevitable that their real-life relationship would be scrutinized and idealized. In the end, it lasted two years, then fizzled out. It appears that McAdams is a repeat offender when it comes to taking her work home; she's currently dating Michael Sheen, her co-star from Midnight in Paris.

Diane Keaton and Al Pacino

Characters: Michael Corleone and Kay Adams
Movie: The Godfather (1972), The Godfather: Part II (1972), The Godfather: Part III (1990)

Diane Keaton is another repeat offender when it comes to dating her co-stars. This time around, it's Al Pacino. Keaton as Kay in The Godfather never seemed quite dangerous or wild (or criminal) enough to be married to Pacino's Michael.

It appears that Keaton off-screen was not quite the woman Pacino wanted to marry either. The couple's off-again-on-again relationship lasted through all three parts of the trilogy, and ended, according to some, when she made an ultimatum: marry or break-up. Keaton's memoir highlights another potential cause: her recurring bulimia, which according to her, caused the end of her relationship with Woody Allen.

Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor

Characters: Mark Antony and Cleoptra
Movie: Cleopatra (1963)

Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor are the OG on-to-off-screen couple. They married twice. Their first marriage last 10 years. They starred in 12 movies together. Even those who haven't seen their movies know who they are. Lindsay Lohan is starring in a laughable looking Lifetime movie about their relationship for chrissake!

Their tumultuous relationship began on the set of Cleopatra, in which Taylor played the title role and Burton played Marc Antony. A good start. Unfortunately, while the movie got a whole lot of attention, it sucked. To make matters worse, because Burton and Taylor were both married when their affair began, the Vatican called the whole thing a big no-no. With that kind of rough start, it's no wonder things didn't end so well...especially considering that Burton was husband number five and six.

Michelle Williams and Heath Ledger

Characters: Alma and Ennis del Mar
Movie: Brokeback Mountain (2005)

The relationship between Michelle Williams and Heath Ledger, both on- and off-screen, was tragic all around. In Brokeback Mountain, the film which brought them together, Williams played Alma, wife of Ledger's Ennis. The snag? Ledger's character was gay. That story was bound to not go well. In real life, Ledger and Williams dated for three years and had a daughter, Matilda, together. Their relationship reached an awful ending with Ledger's death in 2008.

Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe

Characters: Annette Hargrove and Sebastian Valmont
Movie: Cruel Intentions (1999)

In the first (and in our eyes, only) Cruel Intentions, Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe play complete opposites. His character is the asshole who fools around with his stepsister and hers is the sanctimonious virgin who has promised to wait for the right man. You already know how that promise ends up.

For a generation, thier turbulent romance in the movie was idealized by teenage girls (and boys) who wanted to marry Phillippe and to be Witherspoon. The couple met two years before filming the movie, when Witherspoon was 21 and Phillippe was 23. They married two years later and had two children. Their relationship ended after seven years of marriage, when Witherspoon filed for divorce.

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt

Characters: Jane and John Smith
Movie: Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005)

Brangelina. This relationship has to be one of the most controversial on our list. We're pretty sure it was the first time anyone decided to print T-shirts that spelled out whose side the wearer was on in the very public triangle between Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt, and Angelina Jolie.

It all began on the set of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, in which Jolie and Pitt play a wife and husband who pretend to be completely normal, but are secretly both assassins. The movie featured many scenes of Jolie kicking ass, showing off lots of leg, and pouting. It also was where Jolie later said she fell in love with Pitt and where the whole mess with Aniston began.

Pitt and Jolie have stayed strong and have a whole village of kids to show for it. After seven years of living together, the super-couple announced last spring that they are engaged.

Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart

Characters: Edward Cullen and Bella Swan
Movie: Twilight (2008), The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009), The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010), The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1 (2011), The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2 (2012)

Rirsten? Robsten? Krob? These don't have quite the ring of Brangelina and Bennifer. Nonetheless, they've got to be the most talked, blogged, gossiped, and written about pair since the first paparazzo pulled on a nondescript hat and slung a camera over his shoulder.

You know where you have seen them: in those mildly creepy, sugary Twilight movies based on the book series written by a Mormon. K-Pat's relationship is said to have begun sometime during or after the second Twilight film. While Pattinson and Stewart remained as stealth as possible about their life together, all hell broke loose when Stewart was recently caught having an affair with director Rupert Sanders. Could the whole Twilight franchise come crashing down? We doubt it.