Fans were left aghast after remembering actress Talia Balsam was the first wife of legendary Hollywood star George Clooney when she stepped out last week. Many A-listers wed so-called 'ordinary' people before launching into stardom and later went on to getting a divorce in their heyday.
While the current wives of stars including George, Idris Elba, Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Hanks spring to mind easily - many have forgotten the women they first married. Take Billy Bob Thornton, despite marrying six times, the Landman actor is renowned for his brief marriage to Angelina Jolie, not his forgotten first wife Melissa Lee Gatlin.
Similarly to Billy, Nicolas Cage has been at the altar five times - most famously with the late Lisa Marie Presley. And Harrison Ford, 83 - now happily married to Calista Flockhart - said 'I Do' for the first time to his college girlfriend Mary Marquardt back in the 1960s.
George Clooney wed Talia Balsam in a spontaneous Las Vegas ceremony in December 1989 after five years of dating. By 1993, they had divorced, and George famously vowed he would never marry again. Reflecting on the union years later, he told Vanity Fair: 'I probably — definitely — wasn't someone who should have been married at that point. I just don't feel like I gave Talia a fair shot. I was responsible for the failure of that marriage.'
Decades after her brief marriage to George, Talia built a thriving acting career and a high-profile life of her own. She comes from a storied Hollywood lineage, being the daughter of Academy Award-winning actor Martin Balsam and actress Joyce Van Patten. Talia went on to build a steady television resume, appearing as Mona Sterling on Mad Men from 2007 to 2014, and playing Cynthia Walden on Homeland in 2012. She has been married to husband John Slattery since 1998, and the couple share one son.
While fans of Tom Cruise will be well aware of his marriages to Katie Holmes and Nicole Kidman, some could be forgiven for forgetting his first wife - whose life has gone in rather a different direction. Tom started dating his first wife Mimi, now 69, in 1986 and then a year later they got married, but divorced three years later. He quietly married Florida-born actress Mimi during his rise to fame as a leading man in Top Gun with only two people in attendance as they said their vows.
