Even the strongest of Hollywood couples have difficulty surviving the spotlight, but these
couples may have been acting on and off our screens.
Check out these celebrity relationships that were completely fake...
Around the time Man of Steel came out in 2013, actor Henry Cavill started dating Kaley Cuoco.
Their brief relationship had plenty of middle school-style PDA and visits to a popular L.A.
farmers market, where the paparazzi notoriously hang out.
According to Cuoco, though, she just couldn't believe all the attention she was getting.
She told Cosmopolitan,
"I had no one following me until I met Superman…
There had not been one paparazzi photo of me until like seven months ago."
Their highly publicized fling lasted only weeks, and adding fuel to the just-for-PR
fire was the fact that Cuoco and Cavill were both represented by the same public relations
firm.
Sure, that's not so unusual in Hollywood, but Cuoco's faster-than-a-speeding-bullet
approach to love is, considering she immediately moved on to tennis pro Ryan Sweeting and married
him three months later.
That union has since gone kaput, and Cuoco has already remarried: as of June 2018, her
new hubby is professional equestrian Karl Cook, according to Women's Health.
Reality mogul Kim Kardashian has become more and more of a mainstream celeb over the years,
but there was a time when everything she did had a strong air of publicity stunt to it.
There was perhaps no bigger example than her suspiciously brief marriage to basketball
pro Kris Humphries.
Not only was their wedding captured, of course, in a grand televised spectacle in August 2011,
but the union hit the bricks just 72 days after the vows.
According to People magazine, in a reaction statement after the divorce news broke, Humphries
said,
"I love my wife and am devastated to learn she filed for divorce."
Sounds like at least one of them bought into the whole "Fairytale Wedding" storyline.
Kardashian, on the other hand, seemed to have the drama planned accordingly.
With her marriage on the skids and all of it already captured on the yet-to-be-aired
Season 6 of Keeping up with the Kardashians, she told People magazine,
"It will probably be the best season yet."
Maybe the perpetual self-promoter was trying to make the best out of a bad situation, or
maybe she married a guy on TV to boost her show's ratings and reportedly make $2 million
on the whole thing?
"This is so lame."
"Trust me, it's not."
"Come on, this is lame."
"SSH!"
Action star Tom Cruise didn't even have to dent Oprah's couch for people to question
his marriage to Katie Holmes, although his talk show tomfoolery certainly didn't help
matters.
Cruise and Holmes dated for just two months before he proposed at the top of the Eiffel
Tower.
But Cruise wasn't the only one prone to excessive displays of infatuation, which let's be honest,
are usually a cover-up for something.
In a bizarre W magazine interview soon after their engagement, Holmes gushed,
"[Tom] is the most incredible man.
He's so generous and kind, and he helps so many people, and, um, he makes me laugh like
I've never laughed, and he's a great friend."
TomKat split after six years, which some speculated was actually the term of a marriage contract
that included bonuses for Holmes if she had more kids.
Not exactly the kind of fairytale romance we were supposed to believe.
During their three-year marriage, Michael Jackson and his dermatologist's nurse, Debbie
Rowe, had two kids together.
The marriage ended with her handing over full custodial rights in exchange for a Beverly
Hills mansion and a huge chunk of change.
Rowe actually told ABC News that she only wanted to bear the King of Pop's children
as a gift to him.
In the hearings when Rowe relinquished custody of both kids, she also said,
"I did it for him to become a father, not for me to become a mother.
You earn the title parent.
I have done absolutely nothing to earn that title."
...so she literally couldn't have been more open about this faux love affair.
If she was basically just being paid as a surrogate, why go through the charade of getting
married, right?
"To try to prevent some of the taboo, you know, if you have a child out of wedlock.
You know, the kids were going to have it hard enough as it was."
Coming off the heels of her ugly separation from Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston found herself
conveniently in the arms of her co-star from The Break-Up, Vince Vaughn, and just in time
to promote their movie!
Curiously, they took forever to confirm their relationship and somehow managed to keep a
super-low public profile, despite being two of the biggest stars in the business.
Long after the relationship ended, Vaughn told Playboy,
"For me personally, and I think most well-known actors who are together feel this way, I never
enjoyed the paparazzi side of it.
You like someone and you're spending time with them; that's separate, and that was all
fine."
Not the most passionate description of dating Jennifer Aniston.
They called it quits after a year, or in industry terms, "just until the rental and DVD sales
started to dip."
Songstress Taylor Swift's reputation for ex-shaming in her lyrics is legendary.
But perhaps Swift's most laughably transparent relationship was with actor Tom Hiddleston.
According to The Atlantic, a lot of people speculated the whole thing was part of Hiddleston's
attempt to raise his profile enough to be considered for the role of James Bond.
Though their split after three months was said to be "amicable," we're honestly shocked
it didn't result in another Billboard heartbreak chart-topper.
"I was really worried for, mainly for him."
According to People magazine, Blac Chyna tried to "trademark [the name] 'Angela Renée Kardashian'
to use while working in entertainment" soon after she and Rob Kardashian hooked up.
Then the duo quickly spun their romance into a reality show, so the whiff of shenanigans
shrouding this love affair was strong.
"Why are you yelling, you psycho?
What's wrong with you?"
"'Cause it's aggravating."
After giving birth to their daughter, Chyna reportedly bolted from the house she and Kardashian
lived in only to chalk the whole thing up to "her Instagram getting hacked."
That brings us full circle to the absolute nightmare of abuse accusations and legal drama
that marked their painfully awkward breakup.
"I would like to first and foremost thank the judge for granting me this restraining
order."
Real or fake, the whole thing made for drama that was the stuff of reality TV producers'
dreams, which we feel like says it all.
Was it a hot fling, or just one giant internet troll?
That's what people are still wondering about Drake and Jennifer Lopez's alleged hookup,
which, according to People, reportedly lasted only a few months from late 2016 to early
2017.
Later, when Lopez confirmed she was making music with Drake, people began to roll their
eyes.
Lopez continued to play coy through February 2017.
"That moment, what was happening?"
"We were just hanging out."
"Just hanging out?
I hang out with a lot of friends, and we never hang out like that."
But by March 2017, she had apparently had enough.
"Let me clear this up.
I am not with Drake, okay?
I'm not."
"YES!"
So, why did Lopez finally decide to put this rumor to bed?
People reported that Lopez was linked to New York Yankees icon Alex Rodriguez, who she
was still dating as of October 2018, the day after The Daily Show interview aired.
Maybe it was because they always looked so miserable on the red carpet.
Maybe it was because they were the stars of the biggest movie franchise in years.
Whatever the case, tabloids speculated for years that Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson's
relationship was nothing more than great PR for the uber-successful Twilight Saga movies.
Pattinson laughed off the suggestion to The Washington Post in 2012, the year the franchise
ended, saying,
"[My relationship with Stewart] would be a terrible marketing tool, and it's not utilized
very well at all."
"You get into this thing to do movies.
I mean, I've never been interested in trying to sell my personal life, and that's really
the only reason people bring it up."
That same year, Stewart was caught cheating on Pattinson with her married Snow White and
the Huntsman director, Rupert Sanders, according to People magazine.
Curiously, one of Pattinson's only public remarks about the infidelity was,
"S--- happens, you know?
It's just young people, it's normal!
And honestly, who gives a s---?"
Perhaps even more curiously, Stewart looked back on everything with even more dubious
sentiment, telling T magazine in 2016,
"People wanted me and Rob to be together so badly that our relationship was made into
a product.
It wasn't real life anymore.
And that was gross to me."
Of all the random celebrity hookups over the years, few have raised more eyebrows than
Renee Zellweger and Kenny Chesney, who eloped suddenly in May 2005, only to divorce a few
months later, when Zellweger cited the now-infamous "fraud" in her divorce papers.
In a statement to People, Zellweger quickly clarified that, quote, "the term 'fraud' as
listed in the documentation is simply legal language and not a reflection of Kenny's character."
Still, that didn't stop the tabloids from wondering whether that confirmed the rumors
that Chesney was actually gay.
"The only fraud that was committed was me thinking that I knew what it was like, that
I really understood what it was like to be married, and I really didn't."
Speaking to the Advocate in 2016, Zellweger revealed that the gossip made her very upset
for Chesney, saying,
"It made me sad that somehow people were using that as a way to be cruel and calling someone
gay as a pejorative, which has fateful consequences."
And yet, she also admitted she, quote, "forgot about that," reigniting speculation that the
whole marriage was indeed a fraud.
Young love can be complicated, especially when one person is coming to grips with their
sexuality.
Enter Lance Bass and Danielle Fishel.
While the two dated for about a year, attended Fishel's prom together, and said "I love you"
to each other, even Bass admitted their relationship became a sign that he needed to come out of
the closet.
Recalling his decision not to take Fishel's virginity on Valentine's Day because he didn't
want to end up hurting her, Bass told Tyra Banks,
"'Cause I knew, I knew I was gay.
And I knew, you know...
And to me, I loved her, as much as I knew what love was; this is what love was."
In a sea of depressing sham relationships, Bass' description of his love for Fishel makes
this a rare bright spot.
Even better, Bass, who came out as gay in 2006, remained close friends with Fishel.