Susan Sarandon is a five-time Oscar nominee, but while her career has been blessed,
her personal life hasn't been all smooth sailing. She and long term husband Tim
Robbins called it quits after 23 years. Here's the real reason the couple went their separate ways.
After Susan and her first husband, Chris Sarandon, split in 1979, the Oscar-winner dated Sean Penn
and even David Bowie. She eventually had a daughter, Eva Amurri, with Italian director
Franco Amurri. They dated from 1984 to 1988 but never married and, following their breakup,
Sarandon got together with Tim Robbins, whom she met on the set of 1988's Bull Durham.
As she told the Divorced, Not Dead podcast, per Today, her new boyfriend had no issues with her
being a single mom. In fact, he "adored" Eva and treated her as a, quote, “bonus daughter." The
couple eventually had two kids of their own: sons Jack Henry and Miles Guthrie.
That's when things began to change. Sarandon told the podcast that Robbins:
"[...] was very jealous, really jealous of the boys,
part of it was because he didn't have a close relationship with his mom,"
She also told The Guardian in 2014 that:
"[...] relationships, when you don’t have children, can be very different from when
you're nesting and expect a partner to be there on certain other conditions."
Jealousy may also have come into play because they shared the same career. As Sarandon told
The Guardian, fame can be a blessing or a curse when two actors date. She continued:
"[...] That's the problem when two people are in the public eye.
Do you feel bad when they come and ask you for an autograph and not him?"
During her time with Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon was often asked about why she had chosen to forego
convention and not get married. Speaking with The Guardian in 2006, she explained
that it was all about being true to yourself and maintaining your individuality, no matter what.
"I think one of the reasons I haven't married Tim is that I hate that couple’s assumption — that
once you're committed to someone you stop treating each other as individuals,
I like getting up knowing I am choosing to be with that person."
In an earlier chat with The Times of London,
Sarandon was a bit more tongue-in-cheek about her worries over legal matrimony:
"I won't marry [Robbins] because I am too afraid of taking him for granted or him
taking me for granted — maybe it will be a good excuse for a party when I am 80.”
But it seems, despite her best efforts, that's exactly what happened.
Speaking with The Telegraph in 2010, following her split from Robbins,
Sarandon shared that she hadn't much changed her approach to love,
but that refusing marriage wasn't actually the key to unconditional appreciation.
"I've always liked the idea of choosing to be with somebody,
I thought that if you didn't get married you wouldn't take each other
for granted as easily. I don't know if after twenty-something years that was still true."
We may never know exactly what went wrong between Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins,
but we can safely assume that infidelity was never an issue for the couple.
Speaking about jealousy and cheating with The Guardian in 2006, the actor shared how:
"[...] for the most part, I give Tim a lot of rope [...] and he's the same with me."
Admitting that she does get, quote,
"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, in an interview with The Telegraph, she said:
"Throughout my life, I've been with so few people. I never had that kind of free love
1960s. I was slow to lose my virginity."
One thing is for sure, it's clear there's no bad blood between Sarandon
and Robbins. The exes have been publicly spotted many times since their split,
including having lunch with son Jack in Venice, California in 2017.
When AARP asked Susan Sarandon in 2014 about the reason behind her and Tim Robbins' split,
she once again refused to offer any one specific reason,
but she did reveal that her 2009 Broadway stint in Exit the King was a definite a-ha moment and
a turning point in their relationship. As Playbill notes, the play, written by Eugene Ionesco, 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 actress to confront her own biggest fear. As she told AARP:
"The only thing I'm really afraid of is death. I still
haven't gotten to the point where I think that's cool."
By being cast in the production, she was forced to assess her own future and it was a game-changer:
"You can't do a meditation on death and stay in a situation that's not authentic. It made me
examine where I was in my union and in my life, and to have discussions about making changes."
Those discussions may, indeed, have been the catalyst that made Sarandon
and Robbins conclude that their relationship had run its course.
Tim Robbins is actually 12 years Susan Sarandon’s junior, and although her next 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 true connection.
Speaking with Australia's Daily Telegraph in 2021, she explained:
"I find it difficult now to find older guys who would be appropriate. I think I can only be with
people who are really looking, interested, and asking questions, which is much easier
to find when you're younger because nobody knows anything, and everything is new."
It sure sounds like Sarandon wouldn't have put much weight on Robbins' age,
instead focusing on the union itself.
Does Susan Sarandon think she could have done more to save her relationship with Tim Robbins?
That's what it sounded like when the actress told Reuters in 2012 that she
felt "like a failure" after their split. What's more, she also told The Telegraph
back in 2010 that 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! I didn't think it would ever happen, either."
That being said, Sarandon tried to use their breakup, as well as every other
failed relationship, as an opportunity to grow. In her interview with Reuters,
the actor shared how she overcomes the end of a union, saying:
"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."
As for being newly single, she added:
"It's been a lot of different things. It's traumatic and exhilarating. The one thing
that's been really clear to me is that you have to think of your own life and your relationship
and everything as a living organism: It's constantly moving, changing, growing."
Susan Sarandon has often talked about the importance of regularly reevaluating
long-term relationships, but 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.
“When Chris and I married, I thought, well, we’ll just renew every year.
We won’t say it’s forever, but we’ll decide every year if we want to be together.”
The Blackbird star went on to stress the importance of such a contract
and in doing so, possibly showed us exactly what went wrong between her and her partner:
"If you knew that the five-year deadline was coming, you'd be on good behavior;
you'd work harder, and maybe you wouldn't take your partner for granted."
Tim Robbins has largely remained silent about his split from Susan Sarandon,
but he did tell Traveling Boy 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:
"I can't talk about a Hollywood marriage. Susan and I never had a Hollywood marriage. One of the
reasons we stayed together as long as we did was because we kind of didn't talk about this stuff.
You know, broad general ideas about what relationships are
or how that is through the prism of our relationship."
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 told AARP that keeping his private life private has
always been important and that his secret to happiness is not letting the outside world in.
"The way to stay engaged is to disengage,
the most important thing is not to let outside forces determine your interests."
As if to prove his point, Robbins surprised fans in January 2021 with news that he was
divorcing Gratiela Brancusi and, as Vanity Fair put it, ending:
"a marriage no one even knew had happened."
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