Emily Mack
Co-stars fall in love all the time — it’s what keeps the Hollywood gossip going! Usually they’re playing romantic leads. However, a lot of A-listers have proven they don’t mind keeping it all in the family… check out these iconic couples who appeared on film as brother and sister.
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Matthew Broderick and Jennifer Grey
This iconic ’80s couple began dating while filming Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in 1985. Matthew Broderick, of course, played the spunky Ferris Bueller. As the character embarks on a whimsical adventure across Chicagoland, he comes directly at odds with Jeannie, his uptight sister, played by Jennifer Grey. Grey and Broderick kept their relationship low-key until a tragic car crash in Northern Ireland turned the romance into international news.
The year was 1987. Broderick was driving their rented car through Enniskillen when it careened into the wrong lane, colliding head-on with a Volvo. Margaret Doherty and Anna Gallagher, a local mother and daughter, were killed instantly. Not long after, Dirty Dancing premiered catapulting Grey to super stardom. But the trauma of the car crash plagued both of their lives, and the couple broke up the following year.
Grey opened up about the experience recently while promoting her memoir on Entertainment Tonight. “I was the sole living witness,” she said of the accident, “Because Matthew… was unconscious and had amnesia and was very badly injured. I thought he was dead. I didn’t even know there were two other women who were tragically killed at the time. It’s just something that you just don’t come back from in the same way.”
Broderick would go on to marry Sarah Jessica Parker while Grey married actor Clark Gregg; they divorced in 2021.
Drew Barrymore and David Arquette?!
Apparently, Drew Barrymore and David Arquette shared a forgotten fling in the 1990s. They appeared together as siblings Josie and Rob Geller in the 1999 rom-com Never Been Kissed. But Arquette says that they dated before filming began.
Though Drew Barrymore denied it during an interview with Howard Stern, on Watch What Happens Live in 2014, Arquette said that he and Barrymore dated when they were “young kids.” And speaking to PeopleTV in 2018, he doubled down on the claims. “We dated,” he said, “but she denied it on Howard Stern. But, we dated, Drew!” And in his typically brash fashion, Arquette added: “Sorry, I got a big mouth. I talk. I say it like it is.”
Barrymore, too, is usually quite blunt about her personal life. So maybe more details will one day emerge… For now though, it seems that maybe she considered Arquette more of a friend.
Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson
Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson got together around 1985 while filming the screwball comedy Volunteers. At the time, Hanks was still married to his first wife, Samantha Lewes (with whom he shares his older children, Colin Hanks and Elizabeth Hanks). But Volunteers was not their first time meeting. They initially crossed paths on the set of Hanks’ first show, Bosom Buddies, in 1981. Having been attracted to one another back then, Volunteers marked a very fateful reunion. Hanks soon separated from Lewes and he and Wilson went public with their relationship at the premiere of Three Amigos in 1986.
Since then, the couple has appeared in many movies together. Among them: That Thing You Do!, Hanks’ directorial debut, and the Nora Ephron classic Sleepless in Seattle. It’s in that romantic masterpiece that Wilson plays the sister of Hanks’ character — who is ultimately mistaken as his girlfriend by Meg Ryan’s heroine Annie. More recently, Hanks and Wilson appeared together in Larry Crowne: an underrated gem, also directed by Hanks.
The couple shares two grown sons, Chet and Truman.
David Cassidy and Susan Dey
The Partridge Family was infamous for behind-the-scenes drama. And the short-lived affair between David Cassidy and Susan Dey was just one example. Like pretty much every other teen girl in America, Dey harbored a crush on Cassidy throughout show’s run. But Cassidy continually rebuffed her advances… until filming wrapped. They finally hooked up in 1974, according to Cassidy’s memoir ___. But the tryst was unsuccessful.
“Susan lacked the slutty aspect of a female that I always found so attractive,” Cassidy (rudely) wrote. “To me she wasn’t dirty. She wasn’t nasty. She was good.” Cassidy’s rejection of Dey ultimately led to their falling out. They appeared to be on pretty awkward terms in 1990 when presenting at the MTV Music Video awards. See above.
Dey has been married to her second husband, TV producer Bernard Sofronski, since 1988. Cassidy died in 2017 from complications of alcoholism.
Amy Poehler and Will Arnett
Amy Poehler and Will Arnett were a couple long before they teamed up for Blades of Glory, playing the sibling figure skating duo Fairchild and Stranz Van Waldenberg. They first met in 1996 as young comedians in Chicago. They began dating four years later and wed in 2003. They share two sons, Archie and Abel.
And though Poehler and Arnett divorced in 2014, it’s still pretty hilarious watching this real-life husband and wife in their over-the-top Blades of Glory performance.
Lauren Graham and Peter Krause
Falling in love on the set of Parenthood, playing siblings was paramount to the reunion of Lauren Graham and Peter Krause. They first met in the late 90s while filming small arcs on Caroline in the City, and Parenthood marked their return to NBC — in starring roles. Graham played Sarah Braverman, mother of two and sister to Krause’s Adam Braverman, father of three.
Although Graham and Krause tried to keep it in the friend zone at first, they married in 2010, the same year as the show’s first season. Describing the relationship in Good Housekeeping in 2016, Graham said:
Good Housekeeping
“We couldn’t stop talking. Not about ourselves, but about the world and books and family… Once we got together, there was no game play. It was like, You like me, and I like you. It gave me an understanding of life: This is how things happen, and it’s completely random.”
