Susan Sarandon is an acting legend, but her personal life hasn’t been all smooth sailing.
She’s made headlines for celebrity beefs and several high-profile romances.
When she and Tim Robbins called it quits after 23 years and two kids together,
fans were devastated. Sarandon’s publicist shot down claims that she
left Robbins to date a younger man, but Susan herself had a few things to say.
From the very beginning, Susan Sarandon called herself and Tim Robbins “survivors,” talking
about the difficulties of maintaining a long-term relationship. “There’s no such thing as an ideal
relationship. At some point, you have to stop looking at who’s coming in through the door and
try to make something work. That doesn’t make it easier,” Susan said back in 2006.
Having met and fallen in love while shooting the 1988 romantic comedy Bull Durham,
the couple was public about their decision to refrain from getting married.
Susan is quoted as saying that she liked the idea of “choosing to be with somebody”
and “thought that if you didn’t get married, you wouldn’t take each other for granted as easily.”
Despite being together for 23 years, they never tied the knot,
and Susan’s first marriage may explain why. It seems the Feud star was turned off of the
idea even before she walked down the aisle with actor Chris Sarandon. As she told the Divorced,
Not Dead podcast, she wouldn’t even have married Chris if she’d had the choice.
Back in 1967, when she said “I do” for the first and only time to a fellow actor,
it was just the expected thing for two students at the Catholic University of America.
“I was in college at 17,” Sarandon recalled. “We kind of eventually dated. Eventually,
my first sexual experience. I was so grateful. I decided to get married, and only because
we would’ve gotten kicked out of school,” she revealed. However, after seven years of marriage,
the two “decided to mutually move on”, although she did keep his last name.
The Oscar-winner quickly realized that a traditional union wasn’t right for her. “I wasn’t
interested in it. Maybe it was a fear, you know, of losing your identity. When you become a couple,
it’s so easy to have happened,” she said. So could it be that Susan began to feel like she was losing
herself again after two decades with Tim? Or was jealousy to blame for the couple’s split?
After Susan and Chris Sarandon parted ways in 1979, she went on to have a number of famous
relationships, including Sean Penn and David Bowie, but ever since her divorce, she’s only ever
had long-term partnerships and no more marriages. She dated Italian director Franco Amurri from 1984
to 1988, and they had a daughter, Eva Amurri. Following their breakup, Sarandon got together
with Robbins. Her new boyfriend had no issues with her being a single mom.
But while Eva adored Robbins, and he thought of Eva as “a bonus daughter,” once they had their
sons together, problems started cropping up. Things began to change, and Robbins, quote,
“was very jealous, really jealous of the boys.” Reportedly, part of it was because he didn’t have
a close relationship with his mom,” so her close connection with their sons “drove him crazy.”
Still, for a long time, they were the A-listers who casually ran errands and played sports on
cracked cement with locals in Greenwich Village. We can safely assume that infidelity was never
an issue for the couple. Speaking about jealousy and cheating, the actor shared how,
quote, “for the most part, I give Tim a lot of rope, and he’s the same with me.”
Admitting that she does get “offers” for affairs, she said it’s never appealed to her because “what
happens is that when I play through the reality of what that means — of telling the children, of
hurting him... the ramifications are enough of a downer to take the excitement of the offer away.”
And when the actor was once again asked about the reason behind her and Tim Robbins’ split in 2014,
she revealed the truth. Susan said that her 2009 Broadway performance in Exit the
King was a clear a-ha moment and a turning point in their long-lasting relationship.
As Playbill notes, the play is an “absurdist drama which follows
King Berenger I in the final day of his life, surrounded by a decaying kingdom,
as he refuses to acknowledge death and slowly acquiesces to its reality.”
Starring in the comedic role, which tackles the idea of mortality,
pushed the actor to confront her own biggest fear. As she said at the time, “The only thing
I’m really afraid of is death. I still haven’t gotten to the point where I think that’s cool.”
She was forced to assess her future by being cast in the production, and it was a game-changer.
It made her examine where she was in her relationship and her life
and have discussions about making changes. Those discussions may, indeed, have been the
catalyst that sparked the couple to arrive at the conclusion that their romance had run its course.
While it was reported that Susan Sarandon may have left Tim Robbins for a younger man,
that doesn’t really seem to be the case. Not only did Sarandon’s publicist deny those claims,
but the actor herself has shown through the years that it’s never been about age for her.
Robbins is actually 12 years her junior. And although her next and now former boyfriend,
screenwriter Jonathan Bricklin, is 31 years younger than her,
Sarandon has made it clear that she doesn’t look for partners based on their age. Instead,
she just searches for a genuine connection. Speaking with Australia’s Daily Telegraph in 2021,
she explained that she finds it difficult now to find older guys who would be appropriate.
Noting that she likes to date men who are “curious and who want to get on an adventure still.”
Does Susan Sarandon think she could have done more to save her relationship with Tim Robbins?
That’s what it sounded like when the actor said that she felt “like a failure”
three years after their split.
Apparently, she hadn’t necessarily been happy to part ways with Robbins,
recalling how “people were coming up to me in the street and saying, ‘I cried and cried when
I heard.’ Well, I was sadder!” she declared. “I didn’t think it would ever happen, either.”
Susan Sarandon has often talked about the importance of regularly reevaluating
long-term relationships. Still, based on a 2014 interview with The Guardian, it seems that she
didn’t necessarily take her own advice, and it may have resulted in her and Tim Robbins’ split.
“I always thought marriage contracts should be renewed every five years, so you get together and
then there’s a no-guilt release clause after five years. Then, after the next five years,
you talk about it again.” The actor stressed the importance of such a contract and, in doing so,
possibly showed us exactly what went wrong between her and her partner.
Addressing the built-in problem with long-term relationships, Sarandon said the biggest issue is
“you get to a certain point, and you try to hold on to that ... You just try to
maintain the status quo, and that doesn’t work because you can’t control anything or anybody,”
she said. Indeed, you have to grow together and be able to talk about it.
That being said, Sarandon tried to use their breakup,
as well as every other failed relationship, as “an opportunity to grow.” In an interview, the
actor shared how she overcame the end of a union. According to Susan, you need your girlfriends,
you need to take long, long walks until you’re exhausted and no longer freaking out, and you
hold on until a new dawn. Then you get another chance. Well, that doesn’t sound bad at all.
Contrary to his former long-time partner, Tim Robbins has largely remained silent
about his separation from Sarandon. Though, he did say that Bull Durham would forever be
his favorite film because “it’s where I met Susan and a family came out of that for me.”
However, in response to a general question about the high breakup rate in Hollywood,
he was more reserved. According to the actor, he can’t talk about a Hollywood marriage,
because they never had a Hollywood marriage.
In what is one of his only public sentiments on his split from Sarandon, Robbins concluded,
“It’s an area that I’ve always refused to talk about because personally I don’t think it’s
that interesting and I also just don’t think I know anything insightful about this subject.”
The actor similarly revealed that keeping his private life private has always been important,
and that his “secret to happiness” is not letting the outside world in.
As if to prove his point, Robbins surprised fans in January 2021 with news that he was getting a
divorce and, as Vanity Fair put it, ending “a marriage no one even knew had happened.”
And while Susan has been flying solo for several years now, she says that
she’s still in no rush to find a new partner. “I’m kind of getting off on being by myself.”
Surely, Susan is open to finding love again, she’s just looking for someone she can have a good time
with, regardless of their age or gender. “I would like to find someone who’s up for
an adventure kind of attitude. And also, who cares about something passionately and who
loves what they do, whatever that is.” She went on to say that the pandemic has made her more
comfortable with just taking life as it comes and spending all her free time with her three
kids and three grandkids while she can. Only time will truly tell, but in the meantime,
we extend a major shout-out to Sarandon’s Zen attitude toward her love life and life in general!