5 Female Stars Speak on Working With Their Husbands

Hollywood’s tight knit film community often end up falling in love. Collective “awwwh” everyone! That means actors and actresses end up forming relationships not only with their costars, but also with those behind the scenes – directors, producers and writers. These 5 female actresses have all ended up married to someone who is involved in the same kind of work they do, and have spoken on working together. Some have ruled the idea out, stating that it could break up their marriage, while others are happy to mix work with their married lives.

 

Cate Blanchett

Working with writer husband Andrew Upton is enjoyable for Cate: “It’s great – he has the big ideas and I take the credit. A lot of people look at us in horror, but it seems to work. We keep each other honest. And he makes me laugh. At the theatre, with a lot of of plays and educational projects on the go at one, it can get quite hairy, so it’s important to laugh.”

Milla Jovovich

Milla gets creative when she works alongside her director husband Paul W.S. Anderson on ‘Resident Evil’: “Paul is so into it. He loves what he’s doing. You’ll do something and you’ll hear from the monitors, ‘Yeah!’ When we’re on the film, that’s all we talk about, how to make it better. We have a very creative relationship. It’s a lot of fun because what’s a relationship if all you’re doing is cooking and going to the movies every Friday night? We’re having something that is symbiotic – it’s like a continuous card game between us.”

Michelle Pfeiffer

Michelle has ruled out working with her writer/producer husband David E Kelley: “I would be lucky to do something with him because he writes for women like nobody. But it’s dangerous territory and I love so much being able to come home and, no matter how wrong I’ve been  all day, he’s on my side because he hears my side of it! I sort of love keeping that line really clear because I’ve sort of done that with other people and it’s never been good.”

Julianne Moore

Julianne found that working with her director husband Bart Freundlich made the experience more emotional: “The hardest thing about working with someone who knows you that well is that they can see when you’re scared. Stuff that another director might not be able to see, they can tell. You may not want them to see, but they’ll know. When you’re emotionally frightened – and that happens with every job, something you feel you can’t get right – you might not want people to know. But your husband’s going to know, because he knows what you look like when you’re like that.”

Helen Mirren

Helen found it hard to work with her director husband: “Working with him, I have to say, wasn’t easy. My husband in work mode is not the easiest of people, although a lot of people adore working with him. But because I have the emotional connection with him, I would get upset if he was shouting, not at me, but at someone else, demanding something. I would find myself rushing around trying to clean up after him. There’s nothing I love more than going to my husband’s set and being his wife. But this, it mixes the roles up. He didn’t make me cry but he made me very cross.”