15 Celeb Relationships That Ended In Ways That Will Shatter Your Heart Into A Million Pieces

Everybody remembers that one truly life-altering heartbreak. Maybe your first love humiliated you in front of everyone you know, or maybe the person you thought you'd spend the rest of your life with suddenly packed up all their stuff and ghosted you. Now, imagine having to go through all of that pain in the public eye!

Here are 15 celebrity relationships that ended in ways that will shatter your heart into a million pieces:

1. Taylor Swift briefly dated Joe Jonas in 2008. A month after the breakup, she revealed the devastating way he dumped her, telling The Ellen DeGeneres Show, "Some day, I'm gonna find somebody really, really, really great, who's right for me…When I find that person that is right for me, he'll be wonderful, and when I look at that person, I'm not even gonna be able to remember the boy who broke up with me over the phone in 25 seconds when I was 18."

Joe, who swiftly moved on with Camilla Belle, told Ellen, "For those who have expressed concern over the '27 second' phone call, I called to discuss feelings with the other person. Those feelings were obviously not well-received. I did not end the conversation. Someone else did. Phone calls can only last as long as the person on the other end of the line is willing to talk."

The pair traded alleged breakup anthems, with Taylor adding "Forever & Always" to the Fearless tracklist and the Jonas Brothers later releasing "Much Better." More than 10 years later, Taylor publicly expressed her regret over calling Joe out on live TV, telling Ellen that it was the most "rebellious" thing teenage Taylor had done. She said, "That was too much. I was 18. We laugh about it now, but that was mouthy. Just some teenage stuff there."

Taylor and Joe actually mended their relationship in 2015 when he began dating her close friend, Gigi Hadid. Their newfound friendship remained intact when he married her other friend, Sophie Turner, in 2019. However, Sophie got Taylor in the divorce. (But more on that later...)

2. Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake were childhood friends to lovers. After costarring on The Mickey Mouse Club as kids, the two pop icons started dating in 1999. However, in 2002, he reportedly ended things with a devastating two-word text message: "It's over."

According to Page Six, it all went down while Britney was shooting her "Overprotected (The Darkchild Remix)" music video. Chris Applebaum, who directed the video, told the outlet that, toward the end of the second day on set, Britney suddenly vanished for around 20 to 40 minutes, which was a big deal because it costs "20 grand to sit around." He said that he found her sitting on the floor of her trailer in tears, and she showed him Justin's message. Her now-ex was supposedly upset because she'd cheated on him (which she admitted to in her memoir). Britney wasn't sure she could finish the music video, but Chris told her, "If you don't have it in you, I totally understand … but if you want to go out there and finish this last set-up in the rain, you can show him that he just made the biggest fucking mistake of his life."

Britney purportedly replied, "You know that? That's a good idea. I'm going to show him that he blew the best thing he ever had." She filmed the iconic rain scene with "conviction," like a woman "on a mission."

Justin's reps did not respond to BuzzFeed's request for comment at the time of Britney's memoir release.

3. Daniel Day-Lewis and Isabelle Adjani began dating in 1989. Like a classic romance novel hero, he reportedly wrote her wax-sealed letters. However, in 1995, when Isabelle was seven months pregnant, he reportedly sent her a different kind of correspondence — a breakup fax.

4. However, the alleged breakup fax wasn't even Daniel Day-Lewis's worst offense! After ending things with the mother of his child, he moved on with a fitness trainer named Deya Pichardo. The new couple even lived together. However, to Deya's astonishment, Daniel SECRETLY MARRIED Rebecca Miller in 1996!

Deya claimed that she found out her boyfriend had married someone else when a friend called to read her an article about it. She told the Independent, "He said he moved to New York to be with me. Now I know it must have been for Rebecca. ... He must have been cheating on me with Rebecca. I can't understand what Daniel sees in her. For somebody who likes exotic women, she's pretty plain."

5. Perhaps Billy Bob Thornton took inspiration from Daniel Day-Lewis when he abruptly ended things with Laura Dern. The couple met in 1997, and within two years, they were engaged. However, while she was away from home shooting a new movie, he grew closer to his Pushing Tin costar Angelina Jolie. Rather than calling Laura to tell her he met someone else, he seemingly ghosted her and then married Angelina before she returned!

In 2000, Laura told Talk magazine, "I left our home to work on a movie, and while I was away, my boyfriend got married, and I've never heard from him again. It's like a sudden death. For no one has there been any closure or clarity."

6. Tristan Thompson and Khloé Kardashian's long-term on-and-off relationship began in 2016. They welcomed their first child in 2018. Throughout their relationship, Tristan was at the center of multiple cheating rumors, but his 2021 paternity scandal put the final nail in the coffin of their secret engagement.

He and Khloé reportedly split in June 2021, but then in December, his former personal trainer, Maralee Nichols, alleged that he was the father of her baby and sued him for child support. It was later confirmed that, on Tristan's birthday in March — the very day he and Khloé debuted their rekindled romance in public — he left the lavish party she threw him, flew to Texas, and had sex with Maralee, resulting in her pregnancy.

After a paternity test proved Tristan was the father of Maralee's child, he released this statement on his Instagram story: "I take full responsibility for my actions. Now that a paternity test has been established I look forward to amicably raising our son. I sincerely apologize to everyone I’ve hurt or disappointed throughout this ordeal both publicly and privately. Khloé, you don't deserve this. You don't deserve the heartache and humiliation I have caused you. You don't deserve the way I have treated you over the years. My actions certainly have not lined up with the way I view you. I have the utmost respect and love for you. Regardless of what you may think. Again, I am so incredibly sorry."

Khloé and Tristan were quietly engaged the month before he cheated, and they were reportedly still engaged until December 2021, when his paternity scandal came to light. Khloé found out about his affair through the tabloids. At the time, she and Tristan were already planning to have another child together through surrogacy, and their surrogate's embryo transfer was done a few days before Khloé learned he had another child on the way. Their son was born in 2022.

They are not back together, but Khloé still includes him as part of her family.

7. Cara Santana was with Jesse Metcalfe for more than 10 years, and they were engaged for three. But then, in 2020, she suddenly discovered it was all over when she saw pictures of him getting cozy with two different women. A source told People, "She was wearing her ring yesterday. She had no idea things weren't fine until she saw the photos online today. I promise they never broke up until today."

At the time, a different source alleged that the couple had called things off three weeks earlier. However, neither Cara nor Jesse publicly commented on their split.

8. Little Mix's Perrie Edwards met Zayn Malik when One Direction performed on The X Factor UK in 2011. The pair went public with their relationship in mid-2012, and the next year, they got engaged. However, in 2015, only a week after leaving his boy band, Zayn called it off. In Our World, Perrie wrote, "It was horrible, the worst time of my life. A four-year relationship, two-year engagement ended by a simple text message. Just like that. Even though things [in] my career were going really well, it was incredibly difficult for me. ... On the surface, I was happy, but inside I felt broken."

However, Zayn denied her version of events, telling Fader, "I have more respect for Perrie than to end anything over text message. I love her a lot, and I always will, and I would never end our relationship over four years like that. She knows that, I know that, and the public should know that as well. I don't want to explain why or what I did, I just want the public to know I didn't do that."

Regardless of how it ended, the relationship wasn't the only thing Perrie lost. She wrote, "After I split with my partner, out of the blue, I had nowhere to go, which was incredibly stressful. For a while, I had no idea what to do. ... I thought about renting, but I've got dogs and cats, so that was no good. At the time, we were promoting 'Black Magic,' doing a lot of traveling, and while I was in America, things really hit me, and I panicked. I realized I was homeless. I was crying every day, dreading coming back."

However, her mom came to the rescue! Perrie's manager told her that her mother "had been in touch" and was "upset" about how Perrie was feeling. The singer continued, "I told her I was stressed because I didn't know what I should do about where to live once I got back to England. ... She arranged...for me to stay in [Modest! Management owner Richard Griffiths's] guest cottage for as long as I needed, until I got on my feet again. Thank God for him. I put all my stuff in storage, took my dogs, and more or less lived out of a suitcase for a good month and a half."

9. In 2013, The Real Housewives of Atlanta star Porsha Williams was chilling in bed while Kordell Stewart, her husband of two years, was just down the hall. However, when Porsha opened her social media, she was confronted with the devastating news that Kordell had filed for divorce! She told ABC News, "I literally was lying in bed, and I looked at Twitter, and it was going crazy. I saw on Twitter that my husband has filed for divorce."

Assuming it must be a terrible rumor, she went to talk to him about it. She continued, "It wasn't a confrontation. It was me just simply asking my husband, 'Had you filed?' which seemed crazy coming out of my mouth. He said he thought about it, and we'll talk about it later, and he left for work. I had to call my attorney to find out. ... I feel heartbroken, and at time, I feel ashamed. Because I put myself out there to the world as a wife, and I was proud to be married, and for it to end the way it did, it's almost like a failure in a way. But I do know that God has more for me."

10. Sophie Turner married Joe Jonas in 2019, but they split just four years later after a major argument on his birthday. Supposedly, the end of the marriage caught her unaware. He allegedly filed for divorce without her knowledge, and she found out in the press! The court documents said, "The breakdown of the parties' marriage happened very suddenly. The parties had an argument on August 15, 2023. On or about September 1, 2023, the Father filed a divorce case against the Mother in Florida. On or about September 5, 2023, the Mother found out through the media that the Father had filed for divorce."

However, Joe's rep denied this, telling TMZ, "After multiple conversations with Sophie, Joe initiated divorce proceedings in Florida, as Florida is the appropriate jurisdiction for the case. Sophie was aware that Joe was going to file for divorce. The Florida Court has already entered an order that restricts both parents from relocating the children. Sophie was served with this order on September 6, 2023, more than two weeks ago."

According to sources who spoke to TMZ, Joe allegedly decided to divorce Sophie after catching her on the Ring camera, "saying and/or doing something that made him realize the marriage was over." Another source, who spoke to US Weekly, alleged that he caught her speaking poorly of him to a friend, adding, "It wasn't anything more than that, but that was the final straw."

Joe and Sophie's reps didn't respond to BuzzFeed's request for comment at the time.

11. Old Hollywood icon Debbie Reynolds married Eddie Fisher in 1955. The couple, who shared two children, became close friends with Elizabeth Taylor and her then-husband, Mike Todd. The foursome was often photographed together. However, in 1958, only one year into Elizabeth and Mike's marriage, tragedy struck — he was killed in a plane crash. In the midst of their grieving, the friendship group fractured as Elizabeth sought comfort in the arms of her best friend's husband.

Per Vogue, Eddie said, "I divorced Debbie and married Elizabeth the day I finished my run at the Tropicana [in 1959]. ... It was a typical two-rabbi Jewish ceremony. As usual, Elizabeth was late for her own wedding. ... We were married under the chuppah, a canopy, and as is traditional, at the end of the ceremony, I stomped on a wineglass."

However, how you get 'em is how you lose 'em, and Elizabeth famously had an affair with costar Richard Burton (who was married to Sybil Williams at the time) on the set of 1963's Cleopatra. In her 2013 memoir Unsinkable, Debbie wrote, "Elizabeth fell in love with ... Richard Burton, and I warned Eddie that she'd kick him out in a year and a half — and that's exactly what happened, which gave me at least a little comfort... He's not a strong enough personality for Elizabeth, who preferred her men to be, well, Richard Burton."

Elizabeth divorced Eddie in 1964, but later, the women decided to let bygones be bygones. Debbie reportedly said, "We got on the same boat to go to Europe — the Queen Elizabeth. I sent a note to her, and she sent a note to me in passing, and then we had dinner together. She was married to Richard Burton by then. I had been remarried at that point. And we just said, 'Let's call it a day.' And we got smashed. And we had a great evening and stayed friends since then." They later costarred in These Old Broads, which was co-written by Debbie's daughter, Carrie Fisher.

12. In 2024, Zach Bryan announced the end of his yearlong relationship with Brianna LaPaglia on his Instagram story, writing, "Addressing something: Brianna and me have broken up with [each other] and I respect and love her with every ounce of my heart. She has loved me unconditionally for a very long time and for that I'll always thank her. I have had an incredibly hard year personally and struggled through some pretty severe things. I thought it would be beneficial for both of us to go our different ways. I am not perfect and never will be. Please respect Brianna's privacy and space in this and if you have it in your heart, mine too. With everything I am and to anyone I let down, I am sorry. I try my best in everything. I failed people that love me and mostly myself."

The breakup came as a surprise — mostly to Briana herself! On her Instagram story, she shared, "Hey guys I'm feeling really blindsided right now. Gonna hop off social media for a while and attempt to heal privately, when I'm ready I'll be back and ready to talk. I love you guys so much thank you for all of your kind words. Remember you are so loved and everything's always gonna be okay."

In a since-deleted YouTube video she posted a few hours later, she said, "I just woke up to Zach posting on his Instagram that we broke up, and I had no idea that post was going up. He didn't text me. He didn't call me. I just woke up to a bunch of texts being like, 'Are you okay?' And I'm like, 'Did my fucking dad die?' ... I'm, like, completely blindsided by that. ... I'm at the point where it's like, how can you give someone everything and love them so unconditionally, like, through stuff that you shouldn't because you just love them and you want them...like you see the good in them? ... This is so embarrassing. I don't give a fuck. How can you give every ounce of yourself to someone and then be discarded of in a few days? It's really, really heartbreaking."

Later, on an episode of her podcast BFFs, Brianna alleged that, in her relationship with Zach, she faced "narcissistic, emotional abuse." She also alleged the singer and his team offered her a $12 million NDA for her to not publicly speak about their relationship.

Responding in another Instagram story post, Zach reportedly said that he was "so terrifying unphased by the fake shit people say about [him] online." He added, "Coming for people I love and care for is my line and final straw. I've said what I needed to say. My chest is still out and heads are still held high."

13. Matt Damon and Minnie Driver fell in love on the set of 1997's Good Will Hunting. However, he publicly ended things on live TV! On The Oprah Winfrey Show, he announced that he was single.

Afterward, Minnie told the LA Times, "Everything has to be made so mythic. There are these archetypes that everybody has to take apart. I had to be the victim. It's horrendous breaking up with someone anyway, but to have it be so public and to be cast in a role that I would never play if they were paying me — this wronged woman! It's unfortunate that Matt went on Oprah; it seemed like a good forum for him to announce to the world that we were no longer together, which I found fantastically inappropriate. Of course, he was busy declaring his love for me on David Letterman a month previously."

She couldn't just block his number and be done with it. In her 2022 memoir Managing Expectations, she reflected on the surreal feeling of watching the breakup play out on tabloid covers in her local grocery store. She wrote, "It's funny now, when I think about walking down the magazine aisle in my local supermarket at midnight with my best friend, we were like, 'Are you seeing this? This is super weird.' My friend, Alexandra, was like, 'Oh my God, I can't believe this is happening, like, I feel like we're in a movie. I would totally watch this movie, even though I know you're super heartbroken, but this is really weird.'"

Minnie couldn't even just tend to her broken heart in peace because she still had to promote Good Will Hunting through awards season. She said, "There's a guy who'd been sent, the cameraman at the Academy Awards — he'd literally been told to, like, stay on me and, like, he was so in my grill, he was like a wildlife photographer waiting for the kill. He was just waiting for the moment that I was going to break, or something was going to happen, or I was going to get up and scream. He'd been told, 'Stay on her, bud. Something's gonna happen.'" However, her dad sat with her through the Oscars, making her feel protected. She continued, "I look back, and it just feels really overly dramatic and kind of funny — brutal, but funny."

14. The Bachelorette Season 21 star Jenn Tran made franchise history as the first female lead to propose to her final pick. Stopping Devin Strader from popping the question, she asked him to marry her. However, on the "After the Final Rose" episode, she said that he began "pulling away" after filming ended and later told her that he didn't love her anymore.

She said, "We left Hawaii engaged. I thought I found the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. As soon as we left Hawaii, things were different... I was confused, I didn't understand because we had just left so happy. He basically said he didn't love me anymore and didn't feel the same... He was checked out. It wasn't what he wanted anymore."

Jenn said that Devin ended their engagement in a 15-minute phone call a month before the live finale episodes. The show aired the proposal segment, despite Jenn quietly asking, "Do I have a choice?" As it played, a live camera broadcast her emotional reaction with Devin right beside her. Many fans criticized the network for the "cruel" decision.

15. And finally, in 2014, Rita Ora reportedly had no idea that her yearlong relationship with Calvin Harris was over until he tweeted (and later deleted), "To address speculation – myself and Rita ended our relationship some time ago. She is a beautiful, talented woman & I wish her all the best."

Then, to add salt to the wound, he allegedly barred her from performing "I Will Never Let You Down" — which he wrote and produced — at the Teen Choice Awards. Rita later told Marie Claire, "There was a reason why I split up with him. And there was a reason why I'm at this point in my life where I feel like I have so much musical freedom, and I don't have to explain myself to anybody… It was more of a thing where I was in awe. I was at that point in my relationship where I felt he could do no wrong. I thought he had my back and that he'd never steer me wrong. But then 'I Will Never Let You Down' came out, and everything started to go a bit weird. I don't know if it was because business was mixed with personal or what."

However, in 2022, Calvin denied messing with the release of her song, tweeting, "Entire thing is a myth, there is one unreleased song I worked on and it isn't good."