12 Best and Worst Showmances in Hollywood History

Immediately after Pete Davidson’s brief, headline-generating romance with Ariana Grande flamed out, he was spotted getting cozy with British actress Kate Beckinsale. However, this came and went even faster (initial reports of the pair being an item first appeared in January 2019, by April they had split). In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, she denied there was anything showmancy about their relationship. “It’s all quite shocking, and something to get used to,” she said. “I think if you liked the person less, you would bow out of it. If that were the main thrust of the relationship, there would be a problem. But it’s not.”

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In May 2016, photos began circulating of Taylor Swift and actor Tom Hiddleston. A new celebrity couple was birthed, quickly dubbed Hiddleswift. Not coincidentally, around the same time Swift broke up with longtime beau Calvin Harris. As the relationship heated up, so did Hiddleston’s public profile — even as Swift’s alleged pals declared she believed he was “the one.” When the couple split up that September, the scent of showmance was hanging in the air…

Pamela Anderson and Kid Rock were involved in a showmancy on-and-off relationship that saw them date in 2001, get engaged in 2002 and split up in 2003. They rekindled in 2006 and got married in August — by November it was all over. The reason, according to British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, was his comedy Borat. In the film, his Kazakh journalist character is obsessed with meeting Anderson, who makes a brief cameo in the movie — which her husband apparently hated. “Kid Rock saw the movie, and I texted Pamela Anderson and asked, ‘How did it go? What did he think?’” said Cohen in an interview. “And she texted back, ‘He’s getting divorced.’”

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The Toronto-born hitmaker and the “Havana” singer have played the are-they-or-aren’t-they game for years, but finally ditched the coyness in late 2019 when she officially declared, “We’re pretty happy. I really, really love him a lot.” And if the couple’s romance happened to increase interest, the sexy duet and steamy video they released only made fans hungrier for more.

Nobody was quite sure what was going on when former Disney Channel star Bella Thorne was spotted doing some poolside canoodling with Scott Disick, following his split from Khloe Kardashian. While the apparent showmance made headlines, Thorne insisted in an interview that the pair were just friends and had never gotten together “sexually.”

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Wait, Superman dated Penny from The Big Bang Theory? They did indeed hook up, for a magical 10-day fling during the summer of 2013. “I had no one following me until I met Superman,” she told E!News of the sudden interest she received from the paparazzi. ”I've been in this business for 20 years, and my whole life, I could go anywhere, do anything. There had not been one paparazzi photo of me until like several months ago. The recognition was crazy.”

While rumours remain that “momager” Kris Jenner was behind the leaking the infamous sex tape featuring daughter Kim Kardashian and rapper Ray Jay, fame-generating controversy ensued. However the tape made its way online, there’s no denying that Kim became way more famous after the tape then she ever was before. As for Ray Jay, these days he’s best known as “that guy in Kim Kardashian’s sex tape.”

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Co-stars on hit series Riverdale, Cole Sprouse (Jughead) and Lili Reinhart became an item soon after the show debuted, but the pair didn’t confirm the relationship for some time. It can be interesting to watch ex-couples who are forced to remain co-stars, and that certainly added an extra level of interest to the show. Further drama popped up in January 2020 when, just as rumours were floating that they may have reconciled, Sprouse was spotted out and about with Lily-Rose Depp, model daughter of Johnny Depp. How’s that for a showmance-level plot twist?

Admit it, you probably had no idea that Cher and Tom Cruise briefly dated in the mid-1980s, when he was 22 and she was…well, quite a bit older. While the romance was brief, it left an impression; Cher revealed in an interview that she’d “had the greatest lovers ever” and that Cruise was in her “top five.” Revealing they’re still friendly, she also admitted “I don’t get… that whole Scientology thing.”

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Musician John Mayer and Jessica Simpson were quite the item for nearly a year, beginning in the summer 2006, shortly after her divorce from Nick Lachey. In her memoir, Open Book, Simpson suggests the relationship was more about his obsession with her than actual romance. He didn’t exactly dispute that when, in an infamous interview with Playboy, he said Simpson was “like crack cocaine to me... Sexually it was crazy. That’s all I’ll say. It was like napalm, sexual napalm…”

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OK, technically Bradley Cooper and his A Star is Born co-star Lady Gaga never dated — they’ve both confirmed that. Yet fans refused to believe it, given the smouldering chemistry they shared onscreen and their downright steamy duet at the 2019 Academy Awards. Gaga tried to lay the matter to rest when she revealed the pair had carefully choreographed the performance to create the illusion they were loves. “We wanted it to go right through the lens of that camera and to every television that it was being watched on,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “And we worked hard on it, we worked for days. We mapped the whole thing out — it was orchestrated as a performance.”