Susan Sarandon & Tim Robbins Shocking Split

They represented that rare breed, the Hollywood couple that stays together. Having long ago silenced the doubters, the better-with-age older woman and the boyishly handsome younger man seemed made for each other, sharing movie projects, political causes and child-rearing. So total was the partnership between Susan Sarandon, 63, and Tim Robbins, 51, that she once told Ladies Home Journal, “I believe in one-stop shopping.”

It was a stunner, then, when the Oscar-winning duo announced the end of their 23-year relationship in a tersely worded Dec. 23 statement that offered no explanations. Rumors quickly swirled that Sarandon had fallen for a much younger guy, 32-year-old Jonathan Bricklin, whose SPiN table-tennis club in New York City counts Sarandon as an investor. Both camps adamantly denied a romance. “It’s absolutely false,” says a rep for the actress. Echoes Bill Mack, Bricklin’s business partner: “It’s not true.”

What is undeniable is that Sarandon and Robbins were more than a glamorous fixture on the red carpet. Meeting on the set of the 1988 baseball flick Bull Durham, “I remember thinking she was beautiful and smart,” Robbins told Playboy. It wasn’t love at first sight for Sarandon, divorced from actor Chris Sarandon and mother to Eva Amurri, her child from a previous relationship with director Franco Amurri. “I knew this was a great friend,” she told Barbara Walters in 1999. “My daughter chose him long before I did as somebody special.” They had moved in together by 1989 and had a son, Jack, that year; they welcomed brother Miles three years later. Combining family life with work—he directed her in her Oscar-winning role as a nun in Dead Man Walking—and liberal politics (they headlined rallies opposing the Iraq war), they defended their decision not to wed. “When you aren’t married,” Sarandon told the Los Angeles Times in 1992, “I think it is not as easy to take each other for granted.” But the split was not a total surprise to everyone. “Every time I heard Tim talking about their [relationship],” says a Robbins pal, “he said, ‘Susan and I are having problems.'” Even so, one insider adds, ���they raised three amazing kids together. Obviously they did something right.”