16 Celebrities Who Got Their Marriages Annulled (And Why)

Warning: This post mentions heavy drug use and domestic violence.

They say when you know, you know, but what about when you wish your wedding had never even happened? Plenty of celebrity marriages end in divorce, but on rare occasions, the couples decide they want to declare the entire union null and void.

Here are 16 celebrity marriages that were annulled (and why):

1. After six years of dating, Mario Lopez and model/former Miss USA Ali Landry got married in 2004, but only two weeks after they tied the knot in Mexico, Ali ended things amid rumors of his alleged infidelity. They got an annulment. On The Wendy Williams Show, she said, “I had heard something right before the wedding. He swore that it was not true, but I had that feeling in my gut. But all my family was flying away for our destination wedding, and it was a big trip for them. I really should have put the brakes on it at that point, but I was afraid.”

Ali continued, “One of [my] girlfriends said, ‘If you really want to know, I know how to tap a phone.’ The craziest thing. I thought, ‘I don’t want to tap his phone. This is the man I’ve been with, I should trust him.'” However, she decided to go through with the phone tapping anyway, and after their honeymoon, she noticed that different women kept calling him. She said, “I confronted him, and he denied it. He never apologized. Still to this day.”

Seven years after the breakup, Mario publicly admitted to cheating on Ali. He told Howard Stern that he “messed around” with another woman during his bachelor party in Mexico. He said, “I had no business of being in that position… It was spring break…everybody was hanging out. That was a situation where I was not mature and man enough.” When his cousins surprised him with a change of plans from a fishing trip in Cabo to a “whirlwind tour” of the country, he didn’t tell Ali. He was caught on camera with the other woman, and Ali confronted him after her sister showed her the picture.

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2. In 1970, Patty Duke sublet her apartment to Michael Tell, and, though he was practically a “total stranger,” they wound up getting married after the demise of her relationship with Desi Arnaz Jr. (who was only 17). After 13 days together, Patty and Michael split. A year later, they were granted an annulment on the grounds that the marriage was never consummated.

But that’s where things get interesting! At the time of the annulment, Patty had a 3-month-old son named Sean Astin (whom you probably know from The Lord of the Rings). The judge ruled that Michael wasn’t Sean’s father, but Patty refused to reveal the father’s identity. Sean grew up thinking that he was born from an affair his mother had with Addams Family star John Astin, who kept their relationship a secret until his divorce, then married her in 1972. However, when Sean was 14, Patty confessed that his biological father was actually Desi.

Sean got to know Desi, but then came another twist! When he was about 26, he met one of Michael’s relatives, who theorized they were blood. So, living his own version of Mamma Mia!, Sean took a paternity test with John, Desi, and Michael. The results indicated that Michael Tell was his true biological father. Sean maintained close relationships with all three men, who also got along well with each other, but he considers John Astin his dad. He told People, “If you want to know who I am, John Astin is my father, Michael Tell is my biological father. … I have a good relationship with Mike. That’s who I am. I don’t fault anybody, I don’t fault myself or Desi, who is like my godfather, I have such a powerful love bond with this man. He’s a gorgeous human being.”

3. Catherine Oxenberg married producer Robert Evans at his Beverly Hills house in July 1998. However, nine days later, they got an annulment. Robert told Variety, “During my recent medical crisis, Catherine was there for me. And I fell for her. So much so, I forgot it had only been six weeks since I had been hit with a stroke. Between my various film commitments and the physical therapy, it became unrealistic to believe I could simultaneously incorporate a whole new family, home, and lifestyle. That would be terribly unfair to Catherine.”

Catherine told the outlet, “As we all know, during a life and death experience, people tend to bond very quickly. Both of us acted spontaneously, and we regret any confusion we may have caused. At this point, we have reverted to friendship — being preferable to vows. We both agreed to annul our marriage but not our friendship. Who knows, down the road, maybe we’ll give it another shot.”

4. In 2002, Shannen Doherty and pro poker player Rick Salomon “got married super fast” after only about three weeks together. On her podcast, Let’s Be Clear, where Rick was a guest, Shannen said, “We went to Vegas. And I had a witness, you had a witness. And then I said to you, ‘I can’t be married without my dad being there and my mom.’ And you’re like, ‘If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this right now.’ … That was wild. Like, was it normal for you? It felt weird to me.” Her parents did make it to the wedding.

However, the couple got an annulment in 2003 because he “had a little bit of a drug thing back then.” Rick joked, “Girls always wanted the bad boy until they met me.” Shannen continued, “Eventually, things happened that I, sadly, was like, ‘I can’t. I can’t do this anymore.’ I did really want to be married. I wanted to be married to you. I wanted it to work out. But it wasn’t going to work out because he needed to go through a lot more stuff, I think, and find his true sobriety. … At the end of the day, I’ve always loved you. You always made me laugh. You always made me smile. Sometimes you made me cry, but that’s only when you didn’t come because you were off doing other stuff. Not cheating, or any of that stuff, but other stuff.”

Rick said that he was “fucking proud” that he married Shannen. He said, “You’re a part of my story. … I was married to you, and I loved you, and we had some great times, we had some wild times, we had some bad times. But it’s all part of my journey and got me here.”

5. Surprisingly, that wasn’t Rick Salomon’s only annulled marriage to an iconic actor. Pamela Anderson announced their engagement on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2007, identifying him only as a “poker player.” She said, “I paid off a poker debt with sexual favors, and I fell in love. It’s so romantic. It’s romance.” A month later, the couple got married at the Mirage Hotel in Vegas. The small wedding took place during the 90-minute interval between the two magic shows Pamela performed that night. Following her second show, she said, “Hello, I just got married. I did. I’m distracted. It’s a big day. A big day at the office.”

The wedding was in October, but in December, Pamela filed for a dissolution of marriage, citing “irreconcilable differences.” Soon after, she announced they were “working things out.” However, in February 2008, she filed for an annulment. As a reason for the split, she cited “fraud.”

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But that wasn’t the end of the story! In 2013, Pamela told The Ellen DeGeneres Show that she and Rick were “best friends…with benefits” and that she didn’t “want to meet anyone else.” Then, in January 2014, she showed up at the Help Haiti Gala with a wedding ring! Confirming they were remarried, she told E! News, “We’re very happy. Our families are very happy, and that’s all that matters.”

Six months later, Pamela once again filed for divorce, but in August, she had it dismissed. However, in February 2015, she filed for divorce for the final time. Her rep told E! News, “It’s a private matter. Pamela felt best to let go of a difficult situation.” The divorce became very contentious, and Pamela filed for a restraining order against Rick in March. Alleging he was abusive, she said that she was “scared of what he is capable of doing to [her].” Her filing also included many harassing texts and emails from him, including one where he called her a “serial baby killer with her husbands.” Her rep told People, “His claims about Ms. Anderson are ridiculous and do not dignify a response.”

In early April, her restraining order was extended. They were finally granted a divorce at the end of the month. In a joint statement, they said, “Public divorces can be harsh and cruel – we apologize to our families and friends for any hurt and embarrassment we have caused – we have come to an amicable agreement and are moving on. There are private and personal family sensitivities to consider, and we retract any hurtful comments made in haste and distaste. We wish each other and our families well.” Pamela received a $1 million settlement.

6. Janet Jackson was just 16 when she started dating James DeBarge, who was in his late teens. In 1984, when she was 18, they got married in secret, but on their wedding night, he left her alone at a hotel in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for three hours. She became suspicious that he was using drugs.

In her docuseries, Janet Jackson, she said that he would be absent for long periods because of drug use. She said, “There are a lot of nights that I would go searching the streets looking for him — eight o’clock in the morning, four o’clock in the morning. I remember times when I would find the pills, and I would take them and try to flush them down the toilet, and we would be rolling around on the floor fighting for them. That’s not a life for anyone. I cared so much for him, and I saw the good in him as well, and I just wanted that to take precedence as opposed to this ugliness, because I knew that he needed help. But I wasn’t the help that he needed.” Their marriage was annulled after one year.

7. In January 2004, Britney Spears flew Jason Alexander (her childhood friend, not George Costanza) to Las Vegas, where they had a spur-of-the-moment wedding. An infamous 55 hours later, the marriage was annulled. According to court documents, she “lacked understanding of her actions, to the extent that she was incapable of agreeing to the marriage.”

In her 2023 memoir The Woman in Me, Britney wrote, “People have asked me if I loved him. To be clear: he and I were not in love. I was just honestly very drunk — and probably, in a more general sense at that time in my life, very bored.”

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Jason later alleged that “party favors” contributed to their decision to get married and that Britney’s team said he’d be allowed to date her if he signed the annulment paperwork. In Toxic: The Britney Spears Story, he said, “They told me if I would sign the contracts — the annulment — they would let me and Britney continue our relationship, and if we felt the same way in six months, they would give us a proper marriage. They were allowing Britney and I to still have phone communication. So we were talking every day, and I still believed the story I was told, that they were going to let us continue to talk and then we would have this marriage…in the future if we felt the same way.” He claimed her phone number stopped working after 30 days.

8. In 1978, Mick Jagger, who was married to Bianca Pérez-Mora Macías, had an affair with Jerry Hall, who was engaged at the time. After Bianca discovered Mick was cheating, she divorced him. Jerry called off her engagement, and she and Mick became the new it couple.

In the early ’80s, Jerry and Mick broke up, but they quickly got back together. They got married in Indonesia in 1990, but, as the saying goes, how you get them is how you lose them! From 1991 to 1994, Mick cheated on her with model Carla Bruni. However, he and Jerry stayed together until 1999, when she found out that he was having an affair with Luciana Gimenez — and Luciana was pregnant!

So, Jerry and Mick prepared to divorce, but there was a major complication — their marriage wasn’t actually legally binding! Rather than a divorce, they were granted an annulment. She later told the Guardian, “I don’t regret anything, and wouldn’t change anything. I’ve had a wonderful adventure and four beautiful children. Mick and I are great friends. It’s quite an achievement to have had the life we had together.”

9. In January 2005, Renée Zellweger went to NBC’s Concert of Hope with a plan — she was going to pass a note to her celeb crush, Kenny Chesney. Word got to Kenny, so after the telethon, he found her and told her, “I hear you are trying to pass me a note — don’t let the principal find out!” They exchanged contact information, and their relationship blossomed from there. That April, Renée made a surprise appearance at one of Kenny’s concerts, giving him a margarita and a cheek kiss onstage. A month later, they tied the knot at his private estate in the US Virgin Islands.

However, four months later, she filed for an annulment and cited a mysterious reason — “fraud.” In a statement, the actor said she wanted to “clarify that the term ‘fraud’ as listed in the documentation is simply legal language and not a reflection of Kenny’s character.” In his own statement, Kenny said, “This is an incredibly sad time. I just hope everyone can respect the privacy that I know Renée has already asked for.”

Kenny also denied speculation that their marriage ended because of his sexual orientation, telling Playboy, “I think people need to live their lives the way they want to, but I’m pretty confident in the fact that I love girls. I’ve got a long line of girls who could testify that I am not gay. In order for us to get an annulment, the legal papers could claim either physical abuse, which wasn’t true, or three or four other things that also weren’t true. The best thing we could put in there was fraud. So I said, ‘All right, do it. Whatever.'”

10. In 2019, Nicolas Cage got married for the fourth time, tying the knot with makeup artist Erika Koike in Las Vegas. The couple had been dating since 2018. Just a few hours after the wedding, they were reportedly seen having an argument outside the Bellagio. Then, only four days later, the actor filed for an annulment.

Both Nicolas and Erika were reportedly intoxicated when they eloped. In court documents, he said that he “lacked understanding of his actions in marrying [Erika] to the extent that he was incapable of agreeing to the marriage” and that she failed to “disclose to [him] the full nature and extent of her relationship with another person.”

11. In 2004, Nicky Hilton married businessperson Todd Meister in Las Vegas. However, two months in, they were “working on an annulment.” A source told Us Weekly, “Nicky and Todd remain the best of friends, but she is 21, and it’s just not the right time in her life for her to be married. He lives in New York; she’s in LA.”

Nicky and Todd’s marriage was officially annulled shortly before what would’ve been their three-month anniversary. In a joint statement, their reps told People, “Both parties have ended their marriage amicably, and they remain good friends.” The outlet reported that the couple broke up for two main reasons: the distance and their decision to get married “on a whim.”

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12. In 1983, Old Hollywood icon Zsa Zsa Gabor married Felipe De Alba, a lawyer and actor known for movies like Robinson Crusoe and Real Women Have Curves. Their wedding was performed by a ship captain at sea. However, the ship wasn’t in international waters, so the wedding was likely invalid.

But that wasn’t the only legal issue with the wedding! Turns out, Zsa Zsa was actually still married to her seventh husband, Michael O’Hara. So, after just one day, Zsa Zsa and Felipe’s marriage was annulled.

13. Former The Real Housewives of Orange County cast member Meghan King met lawyer Cuffe Biden Owens (who’s the nephew of former president Biden) on a dating app. She told Brides, “[We] texted for a day or two, then spent five straight hours on the phone the first time we spoke. By the time that call ended, Cuffe was booked and packed for a flight to St. Louis that took off in about eight hours. Within a week, we were back on the East Coast, meeting his family, and starting to plan our future together. We didn’t leave each other’s side for weeks.”

Quickly, they realized they wanted to get married. So, in October 2021, they tied the knot at Cuffe’s childhood home in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. Their wedding date was also his parents’ anniversary.

But by mid-2022, their marriage was officially annulled. On the podcast Divorced Not Dead, Meghan said, “I was very confused by the whole [relationship], but I’m just glad that it was short and sweet and it’s done and it’s annulled. The end. I put it behind me. … [I] didn’t ever want to get married again, but it was important to him. We rushed into it… Like I said earlier, I’m a lover, and I want everybody to be happy. I learned some big lessons from that mistake. I’m sure he did as well.”

14. Guns N’ Roses singer Axl Rose famously wrote “Sweet Child O’ Mine” about his then-girlfriend, Erin Everly (who’s the daughter of Don Everly from The Everly Brothers). They started dating in 1986 and got married in 1990. However, before they tied the knot, Axl had allegedly become physically abusive. Erin told People, “You never knew what would set him off.”

In November 1990, the couple argued after Erin cleaned out Axl’s CD collection. He allegedly beat her, and she decided to leave. She said, “I didn’t think I could survive mentally any longer. I was dying inside. At the door, I turned around and said, ‘I want you to look at me, because you’re never going to see me again.’ And he never has.” In January 1991, they got an annulment. Then, in 1994, she sued him for abuse in civil court, and they settled out of court.

15. ’40s radio star Elliott Lewis, aka “Mr. Radio,” and actor/writer Anne Wigton tied the knot in 1940. However, merely a week later, they separated. After less than a month, their marriage was annulled because he didn’t want a family. Anne alleged that Elliott “prior to their marriage fraudulently represented that he would like a family.”

16. And finally, actor Francesca Eastwood (who’s the daughter of Clint Eastwood) and talent manager Jordan Feldstein (the older brother of Jonah Hill and Beanie Feldstein) had a whirlwind Vegas wedding in 2013. Sources told Us Weekly that the couple had “a wild night in Vegas” and eloped “too quickly and were drinking a lot!”

Not even a week later, Francesca sought an annulment. Dina Eastwood, her stepmom, told Bethenny, “[Francesca] would actually do something like [getting married], thinking that no one would ever find out. They don’t get that they are tied to Clint Eastwood or that they have a little bit of success on their own. So [Francesca] calls me and says, ‘I didn’t think anyone would find out.’ Are you shitting me? Like, what are you doing? Get home. I just want to ring her neck, but I am going to hug her, too. … She’s an adrenaline junkie. She’s a lovely, smart, amazing person who will do a goof-off at a whim.”

If you or someone you know is in immediate danger as a result of domestic violence, call 911. For anonymous, confidential help, you can call the 24/7 National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) or chat with an advocate via the website.

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, you can call SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357) and find more resources here.

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