Turns out, the third time is not the charm.
At least not for Robin Wright, whose latest marriage is over. The actress filed for divorce from Clement Giraudet, Saint Laurent’s VP of Celebrity Relations, in September. They’d been married for four years, having met at the brand’s 2017 fashion show in Paris.
Wright’s career is exploding in all kinds of directions — directing, producing,
writing, designing clothes, co-owning a brand. But her love life is less successful.
Now, in the midst of Wright’s third divorce — she was previously wed to soap opera actor Dane Witherspoon from 1986-1988 and Oscar winner Sean Penn fro 1996-2010 — and one broken engagement (to actor Ben Foster), insiders say she’d “like to be settled.”
“All three of those relationships ended for different reasons,” said a producer who’s
worked with Wright. “It’s not that Robin’s got commitment phobia. Her first marriage
was when she was twenty years old. With Sean, it was clear cut: They had real differences
about child rearing. With Ben, they’re both really intense people — they just started
going in different directions. It never would have lasted. Then she fell in love with
Clement and the glamour of Paris, and didn’t think about that [18-year] age difference.”
The 56-year-old Wright has always been intensely private and gives few interviews.
When she does, little info about her private world escapes.
The actress did admit to Elle a few years ago that her ultra-reserved role in director Anthony Minghella’s movie “Breaking and Entering” wasn’t a real stretch. “I’m kinda like that,” she said. “You’re thinking I’m a little bit of a bitch.”
“When people don’t know her, they’re scared of her — because of how real she was as
Claire Underwood” on “House of Cards,” said someone who was close to that Netflix series. “Robin played it very Lady Macbeth. With her look and elegant carriage, people think she’s icy — a Hitchcock blonde. Well, she is shy. Robin’s highly suspect of publicity. People think she’s cold. She’s not. She’s nothing like Claire, just a damn good actress. And very hard worker.”
One of her first roles is how Wright met her first husband, Witherspoon, who was nine years older. The two were co-stars on the NBC soap opera “Santa Barbara,” playing lovers until his character was killed off. Their real-life relationship didn’t last either. (Witherspoon passed away in 2014 at age 56).
She began dating Penn in 1989, not long after his split with first wife Madonna and two years after the movie “The Princess Bride” made Wright a star.
“It was…difficult,” Wright has said of that union, which produced daughter Dylan, now 31, and son Hopper, 29.
The couple first called it quits in 2007 after 11 years together, with Penn filing an application for legal separation that he then withdrew a year later, calling his filing an “arrogant mistake.” Wright filed in 2009, then they reunited again, only to get divorced in 2010.
It wasn’t her only romantic rollercoaster. Two years later, Wright began dating Foster, 14 years her junior and of “Hell or High Water” and “3:10 to Yuma” fame. They announced their engagement in January 2014, broke up in November of that year, then got back together in January 2015. Their second engagement lasted just eight months — but it was long enough for Wright to give a rare interview about her romantic life.
“Perhaps it’s not ladylike [to say): but I’ve never laughed more, read more, or come more than with Ben,” she told Vanity Fair in 2015. “He inspires me to be the best of myself. It took me a long time to grow up. Love is possible as life is possible.”
“Trust me, she’d like to be settled,” said a source who worked on “Wonder Woman” with Wright.
The actress was first spotted with fashion exec Giraudet less than a year before she very quietly married him in 2018 in France.
Giraudet’s job, as VIP of celebrity relations at Saint Laurent, brings him into constant
contact with beauties like Zoe Kravitz, Rosie Huntington-Whitely, Hailey Bieber, Elsa
Hosk and various supermodels. He has to travel a lot and and deals with high-profile events like the Oscars and Paris Fashion Week, and the couple’s schedules were possibly not in sync.
“She’s working all the time now,” said the producer of what may have led to their split, which was reported to the court as “irreconcilable differences.”
“If anyone’s too demanding of her attention [or] jealous of Robin’s precious time with her kids, I can see her breaking it off,” intimated the “Wonder Woman” source.
So what do all these guys have in common?
“Intelligence,” said one Hollywood insider who’s worked with Wright and Penn. “And that bad boy thing. She’s that classic good girl who’s attracted to the dark, brooding type. Maybe that’s why she keeps leaving them.”
Up next for Wright is the film “Where All Light Tends to Go,” which she is producing and co-starring in alongside Billy Bob Thornton, and the Netflix movie “Damsel” with Millie Bobbie Brown, both slated for 2023.. She’s co-designer of the sleepwear line Pour Les Femmes, with her longtime friend and business partner Karen Fowler. The actress also just directed an episode of the Hulu show “Tell Me Lies,” and industry sources said she has a lot more projects she’d like to direct and produce.
And Wright may not have given up on love yet.
Years ago, she told one interviewer: “You never think you can fall in love again — bigger or more — but you do.”