Topics: Steven Spielberg, Celebrity, Film and TV, Sex and Relationships, Weird
When we divorce our spouse, chances are that it didn’t end on terms that’ll make it likely that you’ll see each other again, but Hollywood director Steven Spielberg’s marriage wasn’t like most people’s.
Picture this: you divorce your wife, and as a top-earing hit maker, you decided to throw her the biggest parting gift she could ask for… a $100 million settlement.
You’re walking away as the best divorcee in the world, and you’ve set up your ex for life.
But what happens next?
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Well, if you’re Spielberg and Amy Irving in 1989, you’re going to do something pretty weird.
Many people choose to go their separate ways and never talk again, unless they share kids.
But for Spielberg and Irving, they choose to spend time together in an odd setting.
The 71-year-old retired actress and the 78-year-old filmmaker double date.
That’s right.
Irving and her third husband Kenneth Bowser Jr. and Spielberg and his second wife Kate Capshaw all dine together sometimes.
"We've always communicated and been close," Irving told THR's It Happened in Hollywood Podcast this month.
“He and Kate and my husband and I, we try to double-date now and then,” she added.
Before divorcing, the pair met in 1976 when Irving auditioned for his film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, however, she was too young for the part.
They went on to date and moved in together, but it wasn’t meant to be.
Spielberg promised her role of Marion Ravenwood in Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but when they split and she moved out, the role went elsewhere.
Irving said of that time: “I guess real life meant more to me than my career. I moved out, and I think when you walk out, you don't get the part. That's all there is to it.”
But the pair later reconnected in 1984 in India when she was filming The Far Pavilions as he looking for locations to shoot Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and rekindled their love.
“He was in Sri Lanka, I believe, at the time, and somebody told him that I was in India, and he said, ‘Let's just stop there on our way back’,” she said. “I remember I was on a palanquin being taken to marry [Italian screen star] Rossano Brazzi. I was playing a half-Russian, half-Indian princess. And as I got off the palanquin to go back to my dressing room, there was Steven, and it just kind of sparked up again.”
That’s when they conceived Max, their 39-year-old son, but their love didn’t last.
They were together for 14 years, with a three-year break in between.
But for Irving, it was hard to be married to him.
She said to the LA Times: “I think it hurt being Steven Spielberg's wife and then it hurt being the ex-Mrs. Steven Spielberg. It was awkward for a while. I don't know why. I only know that I felt non-existent.”
Now, the pair are close and on good terms.
