25 Celebrity Quotes About Divorce That Will Hit You Right In The Feels

We typically look to Amy Poehler for levity and laughter, but divorce is one subject she doesn’t have a comedic spin for. In her memoir, Yes, Please she shares candid thoughts about a number of personal experiences — including her split from Will Arnett in 2012. She writes:

Imagine spreading everything you care about on a blanket and then tossing the whole thing up in the air. The process of divorce is about loading that blanket, throwing it up, watching it all spin, and worrying what stuff will break when it lands.

How's that for a heart-wrenching metaphor?

Koko is certainly no stranger to heartbreaking splits — but before her relationship with Tristan Thompson was under the harsh spotlight, it was her 2016 divorce from Lamar Odom that was making headlines. In a 2015 cover story for Complex, she talks about staying in touch with her ex, and being grateful for what they had, despite the fact that it didn’t work out. Here’s one standout quote from the insightful interview:

When you genuinely feel like that was the right relationship, you’re supposed to give it all you can. That’s what marriage is about ... I think Lamar’s gonna always be that person [for me] but that’s what made it so special. Even if I had it for five years or whatever, it was the best ever and I’m grateful I did. Some people don’t get that ever and I had that magic for a long time ... I miss what we had — things we got to do together are just memories. I like looking back and holding on to that stuff. I definitely miss it, and there are times I’ll get so sentimental and so sad, but this had to happen for some reason. I’ll figure it out over time, someone will give me that answer eventually.

Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz are straight-up #divorcegoals. After all, the duo has not only managed to successfully co-parent their daughter Zoe, but Kravitz even gifted his ex-wife and her new husband, Jason Momoa, with a pair of friendship rings. In a March 2018 interview with PORTEREdit, Lisa Bonet discussed her 1992 split, calling it a “very accelerated time, spiritually and intellectually.” She also spoke to her choice to grow stronger from the heartbreak, noting:

I didn’t want to pass on those heirlooms and this fresh wound of a divorce…I think there are probably times when these thresholds can either sink you or you can see who you are and rise and dust yourself off.

Leave it to Goop founder and wellness guru Gwyneth Paltrow to still find the light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to divorce. In an interview with The EDIT, the actress discussed her philosophy on conscious uncoupling and finding an opportunity for personal growth while ending her marriage to Coldplay frontman Chris Martin in 2016. She said:

I wanted to turn my divorce into a positive. What if I didn’t blame the other person for anything, and held myself 100 percent accountable? What if I checked my own sh*t at the door and put my children first? And reminded myself about the things about my ex-husband that I love, and fostered the friendship?

While Paltrow admitted that divorce was an incredibly difficult process, she told The EDIT that she doesn’t have regrets about any of her so-called “failures” — because she uses her mistakes as a “stepping stone to get somewhere else."

It goes without saying that April 2, 2018 will go down in history as a sad day for Jenna Dewan and Channing Tatum shippers because that’s the date that the duo announced they were going their separate ways in a joint statement exclusive to People. Fans were confused, not to mention heartbroken. I mean, if these two beautiful dancers who shared an on-set romance and eventually, a child, can’t make it work, who can? In her January 2019 cover story interview with Cosmopolitan, Dewan revealed how she was able to move on from her divorce, explaining:

I didn’t run away from my feelings. I let myself cry. I let myself grieve. This is one of those situations where I will see the light. The dawn is coming. I do believe in love still, but I also believe it begins with really digging deep and learning how to love yourself.

In other words, Dewan was fully in her feelings — and she embraced it. Seems like she had an emotionally healthy approach all around.

These days, it seems like Scarlett Johansson is a smitten kitten with Colin Jost. Still, the actress definitely had to go through her fair share of heartache before finding her potential happy ending. In her May 2014 cover story for Glamour, Johannsen held nothing back about her newfound perspective on her divorce from Ryan Reynolds in 2011. She told the magazine:

I feel I know now more of what I need in a relationship, what I want in a relationship. And I know I have more tools to communicate, not just with my partner, but with myself. That’s not necessarily any reflection of who I was married to or what was happening in my marriage, but really where I was in my life.

Divorce may be a brutal process but at least ScarJo seems to have learned a lot about herself throughout.

Just one week after Hilary Duff and Mike Comrie finalized the dissolution of their marriage in February of 2015, the ex-couple took their son Luca on a family vacation to Hawaii. So, clearly, Duff has a progressive stance on divorce. In a November 2017 interview on the podcast The Love Bomb, she told her Younger costar Nico Tortorella:

I can't imagine going through that process with anyone but him, and he continues to be my very good friend. That's honestly speaking from my heart.

So, I think we handled it very consciously and with a lot of love. But marriage is sacred and marriage is not for everyone. Marriage is work. Marriage is really hard. Everyone's like, 'Are you going to get married again?' I'm like, 'I don't know!'

Apparently, Duff did regain her faith in the institution because in May 2019, she got engaged to singer-songwriter and producer Matthew Koma, with who[m] she shares a daughter.

When Eva Longoria and NBA star Tony Parker ended their relationship in November 2010 after three years of marriage, they cited "irreconcilable differences" as the reason for their divorce. However, Longoria had to cope with incessant rumors in the media about her ex’s supposed infidelity. She told ABC News’ Katie Couric in 2012:

I think I handled it as gracefully as I could. It was painful, but life goes on. I always said I hold onto the love and not the loss. There was a reason why we got married and fell in love. I think the press also wanted me to hate him and villainize him. And I don't. And I didn't.

In a December 2016 interview with Elle Canada, Miranda Kerr calls herself a naturally positive person who’s always laughing. But apparently, she had a difficult time finding any shred of levity when it came to her divorce from Orlando Bloom. In fact, the supermodel admitted that she fell into a “really bad depression.” After bravely and honestly sharing the dark side of her experience, she revealed that did eventually learn an important lesson from it. Kerr told the magazine:

What I have found is that everything you need, all of the answers are deep inside of you. Sit with yourself, take a few breaths and get close to your spirit.

Who knew meditation and mindfulness could be such powerful mechanisms for coping with divorce?

When Chris Pratt and Anna Faris announced their separation via a Facebook post on Aug. 6, 2017, the world was shook. After all, for the duration of their eight-year marriage, Faris and Pratt seemed to have the picture-perfect relationship. Fortunately the comedienne did take a lot away from the undoubtedly painful experience. In an August 2017 episode of her Unqualified podcast, she advised one caller:

Life is too short to be in relationships where you feel this isn't fully right or somebody doesn't have your back, or somebody doesn't fully value you. Don't be afraid to feel your independence if things aren't right.

Can I get an Amen?

Reese Witherspoon is all about positive vibes only — even in regards to her divorce from Ryan Philippe, who she was married to for seven years and shares two children with. In a May 2011 issue of Parade, she told the magazine:

There are things in my life that are hard to reconcile, like divorce. Sometimes it is very difficult to make sense of how it could possibly happen. Laying blame is so easy. I don't have time for hate or negativity in my life. There's no room for it.

These days, Katy Perry is living her best life with Orlando Bloom #relationshipgoals. But once upon a time, the pop star was married to Russell Brand, and in a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone, she admitted that the split took quite a toll on her. She told the magazine:

[Divorce] was emotionally traumatic for me. It was the death of a dream. I was in fairytale land, and the reality of it wasn't so.

And that’s not the only pearl of divorce wisdom Perry has bestowed on us, either. She also told Marie Claire in 2013 that she survived the experience by drinking and eating Flamin' Hot Cheetos. How’s that for relatable?

Sandra Oh has remained rather close-mouthed about her 2006 divorce from filmmaker Alexander Payne, who she was married to for three years. Still, that doesn’t mean the gossip about her relationship hasn’t gotten to her. When asked about the media coverage of her split in a 2007 interview, the Grey’s Anatomy star told Marie Claire:

I don't listen to this stuff. I don't see it … I tell my people I don't want to know about it because while rationally you might know it's ridiculous, it can hurt your feelings. It can knock me off from being my authentic self.

Jennifer Aniston has been through not one, but two painful divorces. Prior to her 2017 split from Justin Theroux (who she was married to for two years), she and Brad Pitt were the Hollywood couple, until they divorced after five years of marriage. In 2005, she told Vanity Fair:

There are many stages of grief. It's sad, something coming to an end. It cracks you open, in a way — cracks you open to feeling. When you try to avoid the pain, it creates greater pain. I'm a human being, having a human experience in front of the world. I wish it weren't in front of the world. I try really hard to rise above it.

And that, in a nutshell, is why we love Jen — she keeps it real AF.

Speaking of keepin’ it real, Nicole Kidman didn’t sugarcoat things when she commented on her much-publicized split from Tom Cruise, who she was married to for 12 years. In an emotional interview on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show in 2011, the same year that she and Cruise divorced, she said:

I think that divorce is hard for anyone. It's a nightmare, it just is, and you can pretend you're fine. And days you're great [and] days you're not great.

When Vanity Fair interviewed Jennifer Garner for the March 2016 cover story, she and Ben Affleck had just announced their split eight months prior. The couple had been married for exactly 10 years — a lifetime in Hollywood years. After the reporter asked Garner if there was a turning point at which she realized she couldn’t work any harder in her marriage, she wisely replied:

I’m a pretty hard worker. It’s one of the pains in my life that something I believe in so strongly I’ve completely failed at twice. You have to have two people to dance a marriage. My heart’s a little on the tender side right now, and it’s always easier to focus on the ways that you feel hurt, but I know that, with time and some perspective, I’ll have a clearer sense of where I let the system down, because there’s no way I get off in this.

In the HBO documentary Jennifer Lopez: Dance Again, Jennifer Lopez shared that while her third marriage to Marc Anthony was ending (after 10 years together), she felt like she couldn’t get up in the morning. She explained:

There's no pain or failure like going through a divorce. That hope, that dream, that fairy tale—with that first time that dream gets blown to pieces, you feel like you're going to die. You feel like you failed. You feel like no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't make it work.

Considering that Jenny Slate still remains both a creative collaborator and friend with her ex-husband, filmmaker Dean Fleischer-Camp, one might assume the actress and comedienne is a pro at amicable breakups. That doesn’t mean her split didn’t sting, however — in an August 2017 interview with Marie Claire, she told the reporter:

A divorce moves at the speed of complete deadening silence, or that's how it feels. When we got divorced, I felt like I was in outer space. But I think we at least had the foresight, even amidst all that pain, to say, 'If we don't do this now, we will never be able to be together at all in any way.’ … Just because something didn't work out in its original form doesn't mean you have to denigrate it and say it was worth nothing.

In April of 2011, Aguilera finalized her divorce from marketing exec Jordan Bratman, whom she married in 2005. That same year that she and Bratman split, she did an interview with W, in which she revealed how she felt about the media’s response to her personal struggles. She also said, “It got to a point where our life at home was reminding me of my own childhood” (Aguilera’s parents divorced when she was 7). She added:

I will not have my son grow up in a tension-­filled home. I knew there would be a negative reaction in the press to my divorce, but I am not ­going to live my life because of something someone might say. That goes against everything I sing on my records. I have to be myself.

When Mary J. Blige sings “No More Drama,” she really means it. The pop star filed for divorce from Kendu Isaacs, her husband of 12 years, in July of 2016, and she told People in a 2019 interview that it took her a couple of years to heal from the split. Now, she seems to be focusing on self-love. She said:

I think that I realized that no matter what comes to me, no matter how big or bad it is, I have to keep moving, I have to keep living. I said, ‘No, I’m not going to stay in this marriage. I’m out of here.’ That’s what thriving is about.”

I’m very content, and I’m happy with myself. I learned to be happy with just Mary, just enjoying my own company, me by myself most of the time.

On April 2, 2016, Drew Barrymore and art consultant Will Kopelman released a joint statement confirming their separation after four years of marriage. And according to Drew Barrymore, who has been married three times, a divorce is different from any other kind of breakup for one painful reason.

In an interview with Chelsea Handler on her Netflix series, Chelsea, she explained:

When you break up with somebody, you're like, 'Yeah, that didn't work.' When you get divorced, you're like, 'I'm the biggest failure. This is the biggest failure.’ … It's so shameful and hard to actually go through that, even privately.

When it comes to her 2017 divorce from lawyer Michael Mosberg, Jemima Kirke — aka Jessa from HBO’s Girls — isn’t afraid to be blunt AF. Kirke, who was married to Mosberg for seven years, called her 2009 wedding “pointless” in an interview with W Magazine, not because she doesn’t believe in the institution of marriage, but because she believes it’s “wrong to be married and be unhappy and stay.” She also commented on the reason for her split, saying:

I got divorced and I attribute that to acting. And just asking myself, ‘Is this really me? In acting, you are always asking yourself why you do things, why you make the choices you make Everything means something. And so then you start looking at your own life in that way.

When asked in her 2009 Glamour interview about her 2005 split from Nick Lachey (RIP MTV’s Newlyweds), Jessica Simpson admitted she doesn’t like to discuss divorce often because it was a “heart-wrenching” thing to go through. Still, she demonstrated immense hope, adding:

It was hard to imagine I would ever walk down the aisle again. It was like a death in the family: You go through the mourning stage, then the rebellion, and then all of a sudden you have to find life by yourself. Once you do that, you feel complete — and that's the only time you can truly fall in love again, and give yourself over completely to another person.

Despite the fact that Halle Berry had already been through two divorces when she and actor Olivier Martinez split in December 2016, her third was no easier to stomach. In fact, she confessed at the 2017 City Summit and Gala in Los Angeles that she felt "huge disappointment" when her marriage didn’t work out. She explained:

[As] women, we go into marriage thinking it’s going to last forever and that this is our prince on a shiny horse. That’s what fairy tales taught me as a kid... and I’m kind of anti–fairy tales today. I’ve often felt guilty and responsible. I’ve suffered a lot of pain and anguish.