10 celebrity couples you might not realise are in a relationship
Taylor Swift opens up on writing songs with boyfriend Joe Alwyn
Joe Alwyn has been dominating headlines this week saying he wants the details of his relationship with ex-girlfriend Taylor Swift to stay private. The Kinds of Kindness actor said: “As everyone knows, we together – both of us, mutually – decided to keep the more private details of our relationship private.” He added: “There is always going to be a gap between what is known and what is said.”
Joe Alwyn is famous for attempting to keep his six-and-a-half-year-long relationship with the global superstar out of the public eye – and it almost eels as if the world has found out more about their relationship now it’s ended than when they were together.
Here are 10 other celebrity couples who keep their relationship so private that you might not even realise they’re together.
Imelda Staunton and Jim Carter
Imelda Staunton, who starred as Queen Elizabeth in The Crown, and Jim Carter, who plays Mr Carson in Downton Abbey, have been together for over 40 years. The couple met in 1982 when they starred in a National Theatre production of Guys and Dolls. They got married a year later.
Their daughter, Bessie, was born in 1993. Netflix viewers may have not realised that she stars in Bridgerton as Prudence Featherington.
The pair have worked together frequently, such as in The Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1987 production of The Wizard of Oz, the 1998 period drama Shakespeare in Love, the 2007 BBC series Cranford and the 2010 film version of Alice in Wonderland. Staunton joined her husband in the Downton Abbey film and its sequel, Downton Abbey: A New Era,as Lady Maud Bagshaw. They will reprise their roles in a forthcoming final film.
Staunton recently opened up about how she and her husband always prioritise their relationship and turn down roles that would keep them apart for too long.
Leighton Meester and Adam Brody
Leighton Meester, who starred as Blair Waldorf in Gossip Girl, and Adam Brody, who is best known for his role as Seth Cohen in teen drama The OC, married in a private ceremony in 2014. Brody revealed on Podcrushed podcast in 2023 that he first saw Meester when he went to a deli called Canters in Los Angeles with Josh Schwartz, who worked as a producer on both Gossip Girl and The OC; the actor was “smitten instantly”. The couple have a nine-year-old daughter called Arlo and a four-year-old son, whose name they haven’t revealed.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Martin McDonagh
Phoebe Waller-Bridge has been much luckier in love than Fleabag was. She’s been in a relationship with Martin McDonagh since 2017. McDonagh is a filmmaker and playwright. He directed the 2017 Oscar-winning crime comedy Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri/
Waller-Bridge spoke about her relationship for the first time last year, telling Vanity Fair that her relationship helps her with writing. “It’s really useful being with someone who I think is a genius, it just ups your game.,” she said. The couple sparked engagement rumours in September when Waller-Bridge wore a diamond ring to her brother’s wedding.
Emmy Rossum and Sam Esmail
The director and Mr Robot creator Sam Esmail directed Emily Rossum, the star of US comedy Shameless, in her film debut Comet. The pair became engaged in 2015 and got married in New York two years later. They collaborated again on the 2022 drama miniseries Angelyne. The couple announced on Instagram that they had welcomed a daughter in 2021 and a son in 2023.
Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost
Johansson first met the Saturday Night Live star in 2010 when she was the host and he wrote a sketch for her.
The couple worked together again over several years – Johansson appeared on SNL eight more times while she was married to Ryan Reynolds and then French businessman Romain Dauriac. In 2017, she was spotted kissing Jost at a SNL afterparty, a month after she filed for divorce from Dauriac.
They got married in an intimate wedding at their home in New York during the 2020 lockdown, and welcomed their son Cosmo in 2021.
The couple keep the details of their relationship under wraps – Johansson doesn’t have any social media, and rarely appears on Jost’s Instagram page. However, jokes about their relationship do occasionally make their way into SNL skits.
Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally
Parks and Recreation fans will recognise Will & Grace star Megan Mullally as Tammy Swanson, the vindictive ex-wife of Nick Offerman’s Ron Swanson. Over six seasons of the show, Tammy tried to ruin Ron’s life using library books, eye gouging and peanuts. However, fans might not know that the couple are married in real life.
The pair met way back in 2000 while rehearsing for a play called The Berlin Circle at the Evidence Room Theatre Company in Los Angeles. Three years later, they spontaneously got married at their home in Los Angeles the night before the 2003 Emmys. The couple have cameoed in each other’s projects – Offerman appeared in two episodes of Will & Graceand also featured in Children’s Hospital.
Offerman told Buzzfeed that he always learns so much about working together, and he feels “like Luke Skywalker getting to go into lightsaber battle standing next to Obi-Wan Kenobi” when they do.
Natalia Dyer and Charlie Heaton
Dyer and Heaton first met at an audition for Stranger Things in 2015. As their characters Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers fell in love, their off-screen romance flourished, too. The couple tried to keep their relationship secret at the start, and didn’t confirm that they were dating until they attended the 2017 Fashion Awards together.
Dyer and Heaton are so private about their relationships that rumours in 2018 claimed the pair had split because they hadn’t been photographed together in so long. However, in December 2023 the pair were spotted together trying to get a taxi in New York. Dyer and Heaton are currently working together on the fifth and final season of Stranger Things.
Kit Harington and Rose Leslie
Kit Harington and Rose Leslie’s romance has had a much happier outcome than their characters’s relationship in Game of Thrones. The couple met when Harington was starring as Jon Snow and Leslie was cast as his wildling love interest Ygritte. In June 2018, they had a small, traditional wedding at Rayne Church in Aberdeenshire. Their Game of Thrones co-stars Emilia Clarke, Sophie Turner and Peter Dinklage joined the reception at Leslie’s family’s 900-year-old castle.
Their son was born in 2021 and their daughter was born in 2023. The couple have kept the names of their children under wraps. Harington told The Guardian: “I don’t believe in talking about one’s relationship in the press. I strongly believe it’s her relationship and mine, and anything I say here, she might not want me to say. So I just don’t say it. I genuinely think it’s our private life.”
Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender
Vikander met the X-Men star on the dancefloor at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. Their romance bloomed while they starred together as a married couple in the 2016 period drama The Light Between Oceans. The couple’s relationship became official when they attended that year’s Golden Globes together.
In 2017, they got married in a 19th-century farmhouse in Ibiza. They spent the 2020 lockdown together in the French countryside, and their son was born in 2021. Vikander said in 2022 that having a baby changed her life “in every way”.
Neither of them have any social media pages, with the Tomb Raider star telling Harper’s Bazaar that she gave up on sharing her life on Instagram after just a month. “I personally didn’t find the joy in it,” she said.
Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale
Actor Bobby Cannavale (Blue Jasmine, Prime Video series Homecoming) is believed to have met Rose Bryne through mutual friends while she was starring in US drama Damages in 2012. They have kept the details of their relationship secret, with the Bridesmaids actor admitting to Vanity Fair in 2019 that “we’re generally pretty private”.
The couple have worked together on numerous projects, including in the 2014 film adaptation of Annie, the comedies Adult Beginners (2014) and Spy (2015), the play Medea (2020), the romcom Seriously Red (2022) and the comedy drama Ezra (2023).
They have two sons – Rocco Robin, who was born in February 2016, and Rafael, who was born in 2017. In 2020, Cannavale shared a rare photo of their children dressed up as Buzz Lightyear and Woody from Toy Story.