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Working closely on a movie set can often turn Reel Love into Real Love
At least, that’s one lesson in this week’s summer surprise, “Spider-Man Brand New Day,” where Tom Holland reprises Peter Parker for a sixth time
Back when, in his first fly-by as Spidey in 2017’s “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” Holland clicked onscreen and off with Zendaya, his romantic costar MJ. Not only have they subsequently co-starred in every “Spider-Man” movie, they married
Not all reel-to-real unions last a decade
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, for example, became “Bennifer” thanks to incessant media coverage when they co-starred in what became a legendary bomb, 2002’s “Gigli.” They were set to marry – until they weren’t, breaking up in 2004
Years later, their torch relit, and marry they did. Only to divorce two years later in 2024
Among the many couples that co-starred in a film together and saw reel life become real life, the most spectacular example remains “Liz and Dick.”
As in Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton who were cast as combustible doomed lovers in the historical 1963 epic, “Cleopatra.”
Taylor, a child star who reigned, literally, as Hollywood’s biggest star (the first actor to score a million dollar salary), had already scandalized 1950s mores, having been married four times when she went to film in Italy
Initially, the Welsh Burton – married with two kids – and Taylor had tried to be cool. But theirs was a union that had to be. Notorious for excess and monumental fights, a relationship mirrored in Taylor opposite Burton in the now-classic, Oscar-winning 1966 “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.”
Yes, they married (twice!) but it could never last. Divorced (twice), for the final time in 1976
Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively met filming the 2011 “Green Lantern.” Though the movie was a big bomb their 2012 marriage endured, producing (so far) four children
Warren Beatty (“Shampoo,” “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Heaven Can Wait”) had, since the late 1950s, been Hollywood’s most eligible and publicized bachelor
That changed when he cast Annette Bening to play part of a legendary real life couple in the 1991 “Bugsy” — doomed gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and his great love Virginia Hill, a mob courier for Al Capone
Beatty knew almost immediately Bening was to be his real deal. Married since ’92, it’s lasted
Among Hollywood’s most iconic couples is the Golden Age duo of Humphrey Bogart (“Casablanca”) and Lauren Bacall who epitomize Reel to Real when teamed by Warner Bros. for a now-classic 1944 noir “To Have and Have Not” with Bogie as a cynic and Bacall, just 19, in a spectacular debut. The war weary WWII public went wild and Bogie and “Baby” Bacall remained together until his death, from cancer, in 1957
