We tend to think of George Clooney as a mega-famous star who is all loved by the gorgeous
Amal. And he is. But when he married Talia Balsam, he was still struggling to get into Hollywood.
Clooney's very public disavowal of marriage and subsequent 20-year bachelorhood had yet to
commence, and the up-and-coming actor was simply in love. So what went wrong between the couple?
The legend has it, Talia and George hit it off while co-starring in a local play in 1984.
She broke up with him, they got back together, and he proposed. The romance culminated in a
Las Vegas wedding in December 1989. Despite its eventual unraveling,
the relationship seemed to be based on real love. At the time, Clooney said that he "married the one
girl that I truly loved and had loved for years." And to this day, two-decade-long rejection of
marriage and combative divorce notwithstanding, neither actor has said a bad word about the other.
The sudden marriage led to an equally sudden divorce, and by 1993, it was all over. They
have both said they were not ready. George was barely 28, Talia a couple of years older.
In the end, the couple was only together 20 months before they decided to call it quits.
The divorce proceedings lasted 25 months, 5 months longer than the marriage. Then there was a custody
battle… over a pig and assorted wrangling. It was a pot-belly pig named Max. George won.
Then came the never-ending press tour. The ER star famously told Barbara Walters,
"I won't marry again" in 1995. His reason was that he wasn't very good at marriage.
"I probably — definitely — wasn't someone who should have been married at that point," he said
the following year. "I just don't feel like I gave Talia a fair shot," he went on, adding that he was
responsible for the failure of that marriage. Matters were further complicated when it came
to legal counsel. "I would say to Talia, 'You tell me how much — what you think is fair.
I'll write the check. I won't negotiate,'" he remembered. "Instead, I paid $80,000 in
lawyers' fees. And that makes me crazy." Both have admitted they weren't ready for
marriage. George was laser-focused on his career to the exclusion of just about anything else,
including his wife. Surprisingly, many people who ran into him got a distinctly single-guy vibe.
During the pair’s matrimony, Clooney just didn't behave as if they were married.
Talia tended to be a more stay-at-home type, while George was the life and soul of any party.
Many people he encountered were amazed when they learned George was a husband.
And, of course, the more success he had, the more women he attracted.
Some called him a "lousy" husband who only thought about himself.
And after the divorce, Clooney vowed never to remarry, saying he just wasn't very good at
it. He said that the whole "being tied down to one person" thing just wasn't for him.
Ocean's Eleven star was determined not to commit to any relationship on a long-term
basis. And he certainly kept busy dating a string of lovely ladies.
In the late 80s, Clooney was struggling to move on from the D-list. Witness 1988's The
Return of the Killer Tomatoes. It was a terrific film about, guess what, tomatoes that killed.
Sure, George's father was a journalist and news anchorman and the brother of singer
Rosemary Clooney. But the Clooneys were no match for Talia Balsam's connections.
The Divorce star was born into the acting tradition. Her father was actor Martin Balsam,
winner of a Tony and an Academy Award. Among the many films, he starred in were 12 Angry Men,
Alfred Hitchcock's iconic Psycho, and Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Talia's mother is Joyce Van Patten — Dick Van Patten’s sister — known for her work in stage,
TV, and film, and whose credits include Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs and movies like
The Falcon and the Snowman and St. Elmo's Fire. As a young actor, Talia landed herself a recurring
role in the cult 70s sitcom Happy Days and guested in hit series like Dallas and Magnum, P.I.
Her most recent work includes The Good Wife and Divorce. Balsam also
starred in the acclaimed 2020 film Worth with Michael Keaton, Amy Ryan, and Stanley Tucci.
Suffice it to say, there was always plenty of money around in the Balsam family.
In fact, one of George's complaints about their divorce was that Talia, who came from money,
tried to grab as much as she could get. George mainly was a TV actor, while Talia
and her parents flitted between New York and Hollywood, doing both stage and screen work. So,
perhaps George felt at a disadvantage. He remembered well that his father Nick
had come to Hollywood searching for fame and fortune in his younger days and didn't make it.
George was simply hungry for success and all the perks it brought. And he got both.
Talia wanted a "normal" married life. George wanted an A-list
career. There was tension between the two throughout their whole time together.
George, for various reasons, just wasn't around much. He was out to get more and better parts,
while Talia was more relaxed about it all, as she had long-established connections via her family.
Clooney clarified his stance, as he would come to do many times in the ensuing years, saying,
"She didn't do anything to me. We had a relationship that didn't work out,
most of it is my own fault. I was the one in the relationship who wasn't willing to fix things."
It was not until he met the future Amal Clooney, a high-powered human rights lawyer and activist,
that he really met his match. But, we’ll touch on that later.
The societal pressure to have children didn’t help either. "For me, it was
about children," he continued, "Everybody keeps telling me I have to have children,
and they keep betting I will" — literally. Nicole Kidman and Michelle Pfeiffer bet the
actor $10,000 (each) that he'd have kids by 40. "They think it's that I hate kids," he said of his
reluctance to become a father, "but I adore them." The Big Little Lies star followed through when
Clooney's 40th passed, sending a check, but the actor declined to take it,
countering with double or nothing for his 50th. Hopefully, he was able to extend the deal…
"I don't want to be the guy who comes in and does it half-assed, the way I've done many things
in my life," he said. "The minute something is tremendously difficult, I lose some sort
of interest. And I don't ever want to have the responsibility of messing somebody up like that."
These days, Balsam looks back on her marriage to Clooney as a mistake. Ironically, she says
that he will always be a charming man. Hmm, Talia, what do you really think of the guy?
His father Nick says George has grown and branched out so much that he is almost
unrecognizable from the young buck who was married to Talia. At the end of the day,
the actors just weren't suited to one another. Nearly 25 years after the divorce, Balsam starred
in HBO's Divorce and, naturally, was asked about her own dealings with the title subject.
The HBO comedy tells the story of a crumbling marriage between a fictional couple, played by
Sarah Jessica Parker and Thomas Haden Church. At the show's premiere in Chelsea,
Balsam agreed that Church's character is very tough on his onscreen wife.
"Everyone has their flaws in this, and that's what I like about it," the actor told PEOPLE.
When asked to compare her own divorce to the one depicted on the show,
Balsam said her ex-husband managed the situation more gracefully than Church's character.
"If you're trying to compare George to Thomas Haden Church's character,
not at all," she explained. Balsam said her past breakup had
little bearing on preparing for the show. "I'm married, very happily married,
now," she says. "I would say divorce, breaking up, being a child of divorce, any of those
things are always very challenging. And I think that's what makes this sort of universal thing."
While Clooney went on to become Hollywood's most coveted bachelor for the next 20 years,
Talia met another handsome actor, John Slattery. The couple married in 1998 and
welcomed their son Henry a year later. John has been quoted as gushing over his
lovely wife and revealed that he counts himself lucky to have found her. The couple have even
co-starred in the acclaimed series Mad Men. John played Roger Sterling, who runs an advertising
company and cheats on his wife with his secretary — a far cry from his real life.
According to John and Talia, the secret to their marriage is their understanding and friendship,
which equals passion. Well, we suppose, Talia and George had other thoughts on it at the time.
And even though Clooney spent decades talking about his brief marriage to Balsam and swearing
he'd never marry again, he ended up falling head over heels for his now-wife, Amal.
The Tender Bar director shrugged off his long-term bachelorhood in 2014 and welcomed twins, daughter
Ella and son Alexander, in 2017. The eternal bachelor is now a loving and devoted husband
and a doting dad to his four-year-old twins. Despite their painful early divorce,
Talia Balsam and George Clooney found love and happiness. Neither has ever expressed anything
but respect and admiration for the other — and Talia was glad to see her ex finally happy.
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