Celebrities Who Are Not Friends With Their Exes

Breakups are almost always brutal. And while some exes might promise to be friends forever, others are equally serious about never setting eyes on each other again, period. It’s no surprise that these breakups tend to come with nastier circumstances — infidelity, lawsuits, and more have all caused their fair share of nasty splits, and Hollywood is definitely no exception. With Kelly Clarkson’s ongoing divorce from Brandon Blackstock escalating into financial demands and claims of fraud, our minds went to some of the other most famous scorched-earth breakups of all time — like Halle Berry and Eric Benét’s cheating scandal, or Sofia Vergara and Nick Loeb’s extended legal battle over two frozen embryos.

What do all these breakups have in common? To this day, you won’t find these exes with much nice to say about each other, if they’ll mention each other at all. Hollywood can be a small town, but these exes will avoid their former flames like it’s written into their contracts, and the more we hear about each of these splits, the more we can’t blame them. For every person who’s still close with an ex, there’s someone else who has long since blocked their ex’s number, and usually with good reason. Sometimes, it is better to just let sleeping dogs lie — especially if those dogs were sleeping around for the entirety of your marriage.

Read on for all the celebrity exes who have never buried the hatchet — not for the cameras, not for the closure, and not for anything.

A version of this article was previously published in December 2020.

Justin Timberlake & Britney Spears

Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection.

While it seemed like Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears were on fairly good terms following their early aughts breakup, the immediate aftermath of their split seemed anything but amicable. Timberlake memorably wrote “Cry Me A River” as an homage to their failed relationship. And even some of Spears’ songs, such as “Everytime,” have also been attributed to the former couple’s breakup.

In the years since that time, though, the two seemed to be on good terms. Spears even reminisced about their matching denim looks on Instagram. But new revelations in the Framing Britney documentary about how Timberlake treated his relationship with Spears definitely resurfaced a lot of pain. Timberlake even tried to apologize for how he treated his former girlfriend.

In October 2021, Spears poked fun at the “Cry Me A River” music video, noting how much she looked like the actress cast in the visual accompaniment to the song. Based on all of this, we’re not exactly confident these two are meeting up for friendly lunch dates.
Travis Barker & Shanna Moakler

Image Credit: Brad Barket/Everett Collection.

Travis Barker and Shanna Moakler were married from 2004 until their divorce in 2008. While the former couple’s relationship remained out of the spotlight for some time, when Barker began dating (and eventually proposed to) Kourney Kardashian, it became clear that Moakler and Barker were not on good terms.

For her part, Moakler hasn’t exactly hidden her frustrtaions with her former husband’s current romance. She’s subtly shaded the couple on social media, and even addressed how frustrating it is that Barker shares certain elements of his relationship with Moakler (like their love of the film True Romance) with Kardashian. We doubt that Moakler will get an invite to the Kardashian-Barker wedding
Brian Austin Green & Vanessa Marcil

Image Credit: The Mega Agency.

Another on-set romance gone awry, Brian Austin Green and Vanessa Marcil first met on Beverly Hills, 90210 in the ’90s, getting engaged in 2001 and welcoming their son Kassius in 2002 — then splitting come 2003 for undisclosed reasons. It wasn’t until a few years later that we learned Green had sued Marcil for unpaid loans in the amount of $200,000; when his case was dismissed, Marcil wound up suing for $50,000 in return.

In 2018, Marcil came forward and claimed that Green had filed for sole custody of their son Kassius in 2006 alongside his suit for $200k.

“12 years ago I was served legal papers and then spent 8 years+ defending myself and my son in custody court in response to his father & his stepmother trying to get full custody (that means I would have seen my son four days a month) and then asking me to pay them child support,” Marcil wrote on Instagram. “They lost that case & a civil case asking me for 200,000.”

Marcil then claimed that Green and wife Megan Fox had kept him from ever meeting his siblings, until her Sept. 2020 update after Kassius was seen visiting the 90210 reboot set: “[Kass] loves him unconditionally and I am very proud of that fact. I celebrate Kass’ love for his father and remain extremely grateful that My son was finally invited back into his dad’s life and was able to finally meet his youngest brother and finally see his other two siblings again. My son is also an incredible big brother.”
Halle Berry & Eric Benét

Image Credit: Courtesy of Everett Collection.

Halle Berry and Eric Benét first met in 1997, and while their slow burn of a connection didn’t take off right away, they were happily married by 2001. Sadly, their honeymoon period didn’t last long before tabloid rumors of Benét’s infidelity started coming out — which Berry was eager not to believe, until Benét confessed.

Benét went to rehab for sex addiction (a condition he’s since said Berry’s mother insisted on) and tried to work on their marriage, but Berry filed for divorce in 2003 with the following statement.

“Eric and I have had marital problems for some time now and have tried to work things out together. However, at this point, I feel we need time apart to reevaluate our union. We ask that you respect our privacy as we are going through this emotional time.”

In 2004, Berry said she’d learned this in her relationship: “I’ve learned that when I see a flag in a relationship next time, recognize it as a flag. Don’t think ‘Oh, that’s just a shadow. That’s a flag.’ And when I look back at our relationship, I saw the flags. I didn’t see flags of sexual addiction, but I did see flags of something not right.”

In 2010, asked whether he had any regrets about how he’d handled their split, Benét told HipHollywood “I have no regrets.”
Katy Perry & Russell Brand

Image Credit: Dee Cercone/Everett Collection.

You may have forgotten this coupling — honestly, it took us a second to remember — but Katy Perry and Russell Brand were married for two years in the early 2010s. The couple’s whirlwind romance and marriage was highly publicized, but in the years since their divorce, the two haven’t exactly remained close.

Perry reflected on their marriage in 2020, referring to the union as a “tornado.” Immediately following their divorce, though, Perry was a little more candid about their split. “Let’s just say I haven’t heard from him since he texted me saying he was divorcing me December 31, 2011,” the singer told Vogue in 2013.

Today, Perry is engaged to partner Orlando Bloom and the couple share daughter Daisy Dove.
Sofia Vergara & Nick Loeb

Image Credit: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP.

Modern Family star Sofia Vergara got engaged to businessman Nick Loeb in 2012; in 2014, they split up, but not before they’d frozen two embryos in 2013 in the hopes of having a child together. Following their split, Loeb pursued legal action against Vergara for custody of the embryos, declaring his intention to bring them to term via a surrogate and raise the children himself.

Vergara has since indicated her intention to have them destroyed, while Loeb has filed an additional “right to live” lawsuit on behalf of the embryos themselves, with court documents revealing additional damning aspects of their relationship over the years. In 2017, a letter emerged in which Loeb criticized Vergara for speaking her native language Spanish at home, calling it “rude and disrespectful” and “classless.”

Their legal battles are ongoing to this day.
Sandra Bullock & Jesse James

Image Credit: Dee Cercone/Everett Collection.

Sandra Bullock and Jesse James met in 2003 and married in 2005, spending five happy years together leading up to Bullock accepting a Best Actress Oscar in 2010 and thanking her husband for his support. But right around the time she was winning that award, multiple women started coming forward alleging they’d had affairs with James over the course of his marriage.

“This has caused my wife and kids pain and embarrassment beyond comprehension and I am extremely saddened to have brought this on them,” James said in a statement at the time. “I am truly very sorry for the grief I have caused them. I hope one day they can find it in their hearts to forgive me.”

Bullock filed for divorce later that year, and James has since somewhat walked back his statements of remorse, telling Daily Mail in 2017 that “cheating is a part of life” and that the pressures of Los Angeles got to him.
Amber Rose & Kanye West

Image Credit: Rob Rich/Everett Collection.

Amber Rose and Kanye West’s relationship was hot and heavy for about two years — then West moved on with Kim Kardashian and Rose moved on with Reggie Bush and that should have been that. Just a few years later, though, Rose told Star magazine that Kim was “one of the main reasons why me and Kanye are not together,” adding: “she’s a homewrecker!”

West later added fuel to the fire with a 2015 interview in which he said, “If Kim had dated me when I first wanted to be with her, there wouldn’t be an Amber Rose. It’s very hard for a woman to wanna be with someone that’s with Amber Rose. I had to take 30 showers before I got with Kim.”

Naturally, Rose was not happy — and she recently speculated that he makes the comments he does to make Kim feel better about their relationship.
Sophia Bush & Chad Michael Murray

Image Credit: Effie Naddel/Everett Collection.

Sophia Bush and Chad Michael Murray fell in love on the set of One Tree Hill, the television series that kicked off both their careers — and wound up lasting longer than their marriage did. Since the split, Bush has spoken out about feeling pressured to go through with marrying Murray and feeling like she was too young to think clearly about the whole thing.

Opening up about it on podcast Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, Bush said this: “The reason that I don’t talk about it A) is because everyone’s been 21 and stupid,” she said. “What’s complex about this issue for me is that the person who I was 21 and stupid with is also an actor…Being a super nerdy kid and suddenly you’re on TV and all this stuff is happening and one of the cool people you work with thinks you’re awesome, there’s really base brain stuff there,” she added.”

Bush also responded to Murray’s accusation that she was making unfair claims about their relationship: I don’t speak my ex’s name, I’m not talking about anybody else’s experience but my own, and what it was blown up into, and what it was made into … It was made into this story that everybody serviced for his opinion, and not for mine. All I’m doing is talking about my experience.’
John Mayer & Taylor Swift

Image Credit: AP.

John Mayer and Taylor Swift’s 2009 romance was brief, but the repercussions wound up lasting far longer. Swift’s hit song “Dear John” was widely understood to be about her relationship with Mayer and alluded to, among other things, their age difference (Mayer was 31 to her 19).

Mayer told Rolling Stone in 2012 that the song “humiliated” him: “I never got an e-mail. I never got a phone call. I was really caught off-guard, and it really humiliated me at a time when I’d already been dressed down. I mean, how would you feel if, at the lowest you’ve ever been, someone kicked you even lower?”

“I didn’t deserve it,” he added. “I’m pretty good at taking accountability now, and I never did anything to deserve that. It was a really lousy thing for her to do.”