Hollywood love stories are frequent and often capture the nation’s attention as two heartthrobs become a power couple.
But while we may love a good celebrity relationship, frequently the flames of love burn bright before fizzling out as couples struggle to cope with a relationship in the spotlight.
But there is hope! Some celebrity love stories are so sweet that it might just help us to believe in love again.
From being camp pen pals as children to having another shot at love after becoming a widower, here are some of the most romantic A-list love stories.
Carey Mulligan and Marcus Mumford
Promising Young Woman actress, Carey Mulligan, 39, met her Mumford and Sons singer husband, Marcus Mumford, 38, when they were children.
Although the couple didn’t get together until 2012 when they got engaged after just five months of dating, the couple attended a Christian youth camp in the 90s and met as children.
‘Well we ended up going the summer camp when we were kids so we became pen pals,’ she told Good Morning Britain.
‘We weren’t assigned each other as pen pals but we went to the same camp and that’s how we kept in touch as we didn’t have phones, we used to fax a bit when fax machines were cool!’
She added: ‘ There were about 10 years when we lost touch and then we reconnected.’
The actress also revealed that when she first met him at the age of 12, she didn’t believe he was ‘boyfriend material’.
‘I wrote in my diary that he was the nicest, the kindest person I’d ever met and I gave him 9 1/2 out of 10,’ she told the Smartless podcast.
‘I also wrote in my diary that he definitely wasn’t boyfriend material. I mean not that I’d ever had a boyfriend at that time. But I decided that he was not it.’
Colman Domingo and Raúl Domingo
Colman Domingo has spoken on several occasions about the incredible way that he met his husband, producer and director Raúl Domingo.
The actor revealed it was love at first sight, outside of a Walgreens.
‘You’re in Berkeley, California in 2005 and you’re minding your business going into a Walgreens. I’m just going there in Berkeley to get a mask for the night, you know, facial mask,’ he told The Graham Norton Show.
‘So I’m walking in and I see someone walking out, has beautiful hair down to here, lip piercing, beautiful. I see this guy and we look at each other.
‘I’m like, “Oh my God.” And I’m on the phone and I come outside and we look at each other and he’s talking to this young woman and she seemed to be angry about something,’ he said.
He explained that they made eye contact and looked back and forth at one another.
‘They walk off down the street but he keeps looking back and I wave, but he just keeps going and then I’m just dumbfounded,’ Colman said.
He explained that he’s a ‘hopeless romantic’ and ended up on Craiglist three days later to place a missed connections advert. His husband had posted an advert describing him and their meeting outside of a Walgreens and they quickly began dating.
Colman said that after their first date he went back to his husband’s house: ‘I thought he was asleep, four o’clock in the morning I couldn’t sleep and I said “I think I love you and you’re about to change my life,” and we’ve been together for almost 19 years now.’
Matt Damon and Luciana Barroso
Matt Damon and his wife Luciana Barroso met in 2003 in Miami.
In a 2018 interview with Vogue Australia, Luciana explained how they first met when she was working at a nightclub and he turned to her to escape the crowd.
‘Matt’s story is that he saw me across the room and there was a light on me. And I’m like, “Yeah, it was a nightclub — there were lights everywhere!”
‘He had started getting recognized and asked for pictures and autographs, and then it got kind of aggressive because people are drinking and stuff,’
‘So he came and hid behind the bar…[wanting to] just hang out back there and have a drink. He says, “Oh, I saw you and I really wanted to talk to you.”
She revealed that she put the actor to work and made him help her make drinks behind the bar. She said he ‘made a ton of money in tips that night’ because ‘everyone wanted to go and see him.’
She revealed they had a ‘connection right away’ and she felt ‘very comfortable’ with him right away.
‘By the end of the night, he invited me to go out with his friends,’ she said.
‘But I was like: “I can’t, I have a four-year-old daughter, I’m not going anywhere”… and that was one of the things he loved, that I had a daughter.’
She added that she instantly saw him as more than just a famous face: ‘When you meet somebody that you have a connection with, that’s just the person that you have a connection with, all the other stuff — the movie-star part — wasn’t really a factor. It was just Matt, to me he’s just Matt.’
The couple met in 2003, got engaged in September 2005 and tied the knot in December 2005. They have three daughters together Isabella, Gia, and Stella, and Matt is stepfather to Luciana’s daughter from a previous relationship, Alexia.
Stephen Colbert and Evelyn McGee-Colbert
Late Night talk show host Stephen Colbert, 60, met his wife Evie in a moment he has described as love at first sight.
Stephen revealed in 1990 that he got an ultimatum from his then girlfriend that he should marry her or break up.
He explained that he went back to South Carolina to think about it, which is when he met his wife.
‘I went home to South Carolina to think about it, because I think more clearly floating in the creek,’ he said on Today.
‘I got off the plane my mum said: “You seem distracted what’s going on?” I said “I’m here to make this decision” and she said “Well, do you want to marry her?” and I said: “I don’t know.”
‘And she said, “I don’t know isn’t good enough.” And then I had a week to kill, that night she goes “Do you wanna come to the theatre, your sister can’t come?”
‘I met Evie in the lobby of that theatre, and I saw her, and I thought, a little voice in my head said, “There’s your wife. You’re going to marry her”.’
Stanley Tucci and Felicity Blunt
Stanley Tucci married his first wife Kathryn Spath Tucci in 1995. She tragically passed after 14 years of marriage when she developed breast cancer.
The actor was open about his grief after her death in 2009 but managed to find love again with Felicity Blunt- the sister of actress Emily Blunt – who he met at the 2006 premiere of The Devil Wears Prada.
The couple reconnected at Emily Blunt’s wedding in 2010 and began dating shortly after.
‘I met [Felicity] through her sister… Emily. I had met her at the premiere of the Devil Wears Prada. My late wife was still alive, she was undergoing treatments for cancer. She passed away a couple of years later.
‘A year and a half after that, I went to Emily’s wedding in Italy and I saw Felicity and then I was coming here [to the UK] to do Captain America and we started dating and that was it,’ he told BBC Radio 2.
The actor revealed that in a strange twist of fate, his late wife and current wife spoke, years before they got together.
‘[Felicity] and Kate talked at the premiere that night and I have a photo of them together, which is so odd,’ Stanley told Marc Maronon the WTF podcast in 2021.
He told BBC’s Desert Island Discs: ‘I was afraid to get into a relationship and I kept trying to break it off because I am so much older than she is and I didn’t want to feel old for the rest of my life. But I knew this was an incredibly special person.’
‘Felicity has been so incredible taking on a widower and three children. That’s a huge thing at a very young age too. If anybody made things better for all of us, it’s her. She’s the one.’
The pair now share five children, Stanley’s three children from his first marriage, and two children together, Matteo, 10, and Emilia, 6.
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