The actors, musicians, talk show hosts, and athletes below have varying opinions on marriage. Some don’t want to fix what’s not broken. Some have been married before and don’t want to go down that road again. Some don’t want the government involved in their relationship. Some don’t need any more toasters, so what’s the point? Whether you’re against the concept yourself or just want to get a better idea why some stars aren’t going the traditional route, these celebs’ stories may just speak to you. And for famous folks on the other side of the coin, check out The Longest-Lasting Marriages in Hollywood. Some people have always known that they don’t want to get married, and Charlize Theron fits into that category. “I haven’t been in a relationship for a very long time. I never wanted to get married,” she told Glamour in 2019. “Those are things that are not hard for me, because they’re innately my truth. I find people are somewhat perplexed by that, and also more with women, right?” For on-screen pairs who didn’t get along on set, check out 11 Beloved Movie Couples Who Clashed Behind the Scenes. Oprah Winfrey and her partner Stedman Graham have been together for years without making it official. Winfrey has explained that she and Graham did get engaged back in 1993, but that they decided not to go through with getting married, which allowed them to maintain their own identities in a way they didn’t think would be possible otherwise.ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb “The moment after I said yes to his proposal, I had doubts,” Winfrey wrote for her own magazine in 2020. “I realized I didn’t actually want a marriage. I wanted to be asked. I wanted to know he felt I was worthy of being his missus, but I didn’t want the sacrifices, the compromises, the day-in-day-out commitment required to make a marriage work. My life with the show was my priority, and we both knew it.” The talk show host added, “He and I agree that had we tied the marital knot, we would not still be together.” Actors Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn are doing just fine without a formal marriage. “We’ve been married before, didn’t work. So why do it again?” Hawn said on Loose Women in 2015, at which point she’d been with Russell for 32 years. Hawn was previously married twice to Gus Trikonis and Bill Hudson, and Russell to Season Hubley. Hawn continued, “Marriage ends up being a business deal, because at the end of a marriage, no matter how long or short it is, somebody owes somebody money … It’s ridiculous to base your relationship on money, and money can destroy people.” Hawn told People the same year, “We have our ups and downs like everybody else. You have to want to stay together, and we really want to. Therefore you work to be together.” For stars you probably wish had made it work, check out 15 Celebrity Couple Breakups You’re Probably Still Mourning. Kardashian-Jenner family matriarch Kris Jenner has been married twice before, to Robert Kardashian and to Caitlyn Jenner. And while she’s in another long-term relationship now with Corey Gamble, she’s not looking to have a third wedding. “You know, you never say never, but I often say it’s just not what I think I need to do again based on my past,” Jenner said on the Divorce Sucks! podcast in 2018 (via People). “I don’t have the need to put on a long, white dress and walk down an aisle. I’ve done that. I’ve had the big wedding, I’ve had the babies and the kids—six of them, by the way. It’s not like we need to do that again; my body wouldn’t cooperate if I wanted it to. I think that I just feel really grateful and blessed for my past experiences and I’m looking forward to my future and I just don’t think that I want to go there.” Actor and The View host Whoopi Goldberg is very straightforward about her feelings on marriage, after being married three times in the past. As she told The New York Times Magazine in 2016, “I’m much happier on my own. I can spend as much time with somebody as I want to spend, but I’m not looking to be with somebody forever or live with someone. I don’t want somebody in my house.” She added, “I’m the round peg, and marriage is the square hole. You can’t have a square hole, can you?” For fleeting star couples of the recent past, check out Celebrity Couples From the 2000s You Totally Forgot About. Singer Shakira and soccer player Gerard Piqué have been together since 2011 and have two children together. Their reason for not getting married? “To tell you the truth, marriage scares the [mouths swear word] out of me,” Shakira said during a joint interview with Piqué on 60 Minutes in 2020. “I don’t want him to see me as the wife. I’d rather him see me as his girlfriend. His lover, his girlfriend. It’s like a little forbidden fruit, you know? I wanna keep him on his toes.” She added, laughing, “I want him to think that anything’s possible depending on behavior.” “I believe in [marriage] for other people,” Susan Sarandon said on an episode of Katie Couric’s talk show, Katie, in 2012 (via Yahoo!). “I think if it works for you, that’s fabulous. I don’t know, I was always hesitant [of] this idea of locking it in. I thought it would make it less spontaneous … For me personally, maybe it was growing up a hippie at the time I did, it was never high [on my list of priorities].” The Thelma & Louise star had previously been married to actor Chris Sarandon from 1967 to 1979, but after that had relationships without marrying, including her 23 years with actor Tim Robbins. For more celeb trivia sent right to your inbox, sign up for our daily newsletter. In 2014, comedian Sarah Silverman made her thoughts on marriage very clear when she tweeted, “Just read that I wanna get married which is hilarious b/c I will never get married.” A year later, during an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Silverman said that, no matter what, she wouldn’t get married until same-sex marriage was legalized everywhere (it was in the U.S. later the same year). However, she also added (via People), “And besides that I don’t know that I would want to get the government involved in my love. Personally.” 10 star Bo Derek and Sex and the City actor John Corbett have been together for almost 20 years, and they’ve decided not to get married just because it wouldn’t mean much to them. “I don’t mind being asked [about marriage] because we’re the abnormal people,” Derek told Entertainment Tonight in September 2020. “It’s not really a conscious decision not to, it’s just at our age, we’re not going to have children, we’re not building a new family together, that this is important to a family tree. So for us, it would just be a piece of paper.” Derek was previously married to actor and director John Derek, while Corbett has never been married. Diane Kruger was married to director Guillaume Canet from 2001 to 2006, and it sounds like she probably won’t be tying the knot again. “Without sounding pessimistic, I learned that I don’t believe in marriage. I believe in a commitment that you make in your heart. There’s no paper that will make you stay,” the Inglourious Basterds actor, who’s now dating Norman Reedus, told Glamour years ago. But, more recently, she made comments that seemed a little more open. “Never say never,” she told Porter in 2019. “I would have a party. I’d like to wear a nice dress. But I’m not religious, so that aspect of marriage doesn’t mean anything to me. There’s obviously a financial security that comes with marriage, but I’m financially independent—I don’t need anyone for that.” Kruger might be somewhat flexible on the idea of marriage, but someone who isn’t leaving open the possibility of marrying again at all is Drew Barrymore. “Never. Never, never, never. I will never get married again!” Barrymore told People in September 2020. “And I also believe people should not say the word ’never,’ and I will never, with a capital N-E-V-E-R, never get married.” Okay then! Barrymore, who has been married three times, continued, “It’s like I have two options: Cut it—this has not worked—or be Elizabeth Taylor. And I have too many more to go. I never want to be entwined with someone like that again ever. You break up, and you move on. You get divorced, and it’s just so different. I love that we are trying to hold on to an institution that [started] when the closest person to you for companionship was a three-day horse ride away and your life span was 30 years.” Allison Janney was engaged once, but she didn’t end up getting married, and now her thoughts on the idea going forward are clear. Asked by E! News if there was “any ring yet” after she’d been with her boyfriend for a year, she said, “No, gosh, no. I don’t believe in that institution.” Interestingly, back in 2005 when Janney was engaged to actor Richard Jenik, she spoke to Women’s Health about her fears about getting married. “I used to have a recurring dream that I would marry a man and, right after the ceremony, they’d turn into somebody completely different,” the West Wing star said. “I’d marry Arnold Schwarzenegger and then he’d be Danny DeVito—except that no one else saw the difference. So you could say I’ve had some fears about it. [Laughs] But I’ve realized the fear was all inside me. I’m ready for it now: Richard’s the right man, at the right time. It feels good to want to commit to someone, instead of having one foot out the door, saying, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know!’” British Office star Ricky Gervais and novelist Jane Fallon have been together since 1982, and they’re not married simply because they don’t care that much about it. “We’re not married because neither of us are fussed,” Fallon told the Daily Mail in 2018, “I think if one of us really cared then we would probably do it but it’s not really been anything that either of us have ever really needed.” In an earlier interview, Gervais shared another reason. “We think there’s no point,” he told David Letterman in 2012. “We don’t need any toasters. We don’t want our families to meet. That would be bad.”
