IF the curse of Hello! magazine signals the beginning of the end for celebrity relationships, then giving an interview to Vanity Fair forces estranged couples to tell the truth about their demise. "Certainly it was like sitting on a time bomb," Emma Thompson says, in the latest issue, of her marriage to Ken Branagh. The relationship officially hit the rocks last autumn following a News Of The World stake out of the couple's West Hampstead home. "If you like, the pain sort of started such a long time ago. Three years. I know I'm steering into a calmer place. Despite the pain, one comes through it."
Of course Ken and Em are still terribly civilised about each other.
"Ken will always be family. That's a given," Em says graciously. "Not even a grain of failure in any sense could be attributed to Emma in any of this," Ken replies sportingly. "She's been absolutely magnificent throughout."
Still, the truth of the matter is a bit smellier: Britain's original golden couple, the relationship that survived Charles and Di, and John and Jill, and Bob and Paula, and Will and Julia, not to mention Hughgate, has actually been going to the dogs since 1992. No wonder Emma told OK! magazine the following year: "I think it's interesting that the couples we've played have, generally speaking, had fairly disastrous relationships. Look Back In Anger, for instance, or Dead Again. Let's just say that in professional terms, Romeo and Juliet we ain't."
Why do celebrity couples always pretend everything is all right even when the relationship is obviously in terminal decline? In May 1994 Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford so deep in denial that they took out a multi thousand pound advert in the London Times to affirm their publicly disputed love. "We got married because we love each other," ran the copy. "We are heterosexual and monogamous and take our commitment to each other very seriously. We remain very married. We both look forward to having a family." Yet by December of the same year, their LA publicist was announcing the relationship was over, and had been so for months: "This personal and painful decision was made by us in July."
In April 1993, meanwhile, Hollywood beautiful people Ellen Barkin and Gabriel Byrne were going all gooey about each other in an interview with the International Herald Tribune: "Ellen is enormously kind and generous and incredibly soft and tender," declared Byrne, lovingly. "I really enjoy being with Gabriel," cooed Barkin. "I never tire of hearing him relay the day's events the way he does." Must have been a bloody terrible summer, then, because the couple separated later that year.
Celebrity marriages clearly come under pressures that don't trouble ordinary ones. The booze, the parties, the girls talk about stress. Here's Paula Yates on life with Bob Geldof: "Doing Big Breakfast didn't help exactly, because Bob likes to go to bed late and I was getting up at 4 Fa.m. and then spending the rest of my day wrapped up in children."
In the case of Ken and Em, their public statement was all about conflicting schedules - a common celebrity complaint: "Our work has inevitably led to our spending long periods of time away from each other and, as a result, we haven drifted apart." Indeed, the last project they did together was Much Ado About Nothing in 1993. Since then, Em seems to have spent all her spare time checking into health spas. She even missed the premiere of Ken's big budget flop Frankenstein, while he returned the compliment failing to appear at Carrington.
THE high turnover in celebrity marriages probably has more to do with all the opportunities for playing away offered by showbiz life, in particular the hothouse atmosphere of the film set. Who can blame Melanie Griffith - formerly Mrs Don Johnson - for going off with co star Antonio Banderas? Indeed, who could fault Emma Thompson for having an affair with Greg Wise, the cute one in The Buccaneers, whom she cast as Willoughby in her forthcoming adaptation of Sense and Sensibility? (Branagh, meanwhile, has been linked with Frankenstein co star Helena Bonham Carter.) Unfortunately, such liaisons are hard to keep since the press - notably the News Of The World, who scooped Em and Greg - takes an active interest in chasing celebrities off their pedestals, as well as on to them.
Still, why are famous people so reluctant to admit a marriage is all over, when its terminal decline would be screamingly obvious to any marriage counsellor? You haven't eaten a meal together for months, you can't remember the last premiere you showed up to a deux, and you still haven't had children.
Perhaps these childless couples stay together because the relationship is creatively profitable, as in the case of John McCarthy and Jill Morrell who, funnily enough, didn't split up until after the publication of Some Other Rainbow Same thing goes for Liz Hurley, who was a B list starlet before accompanying boyfriend Hugh Grant to the premiere of That Blockbuster wearing That Dress and later forgiving him for That Blow Job.
It must have been true love in the early stages of Ken and Em's relationship, for who else but a devoted husband would cast lovable but toothy Thompson as drop dead cheesecake in Dead Again, the couple's first American film? But these days, together their careers aren't they have been successfully working independently for the past three years (especially Oscar winning US covergirl Em whose star has now thoroughly eclipsed Ken's perhaps professional rivalry was part of the problem).
The real reason that celebrities are all into divorce denial lies in the nature of stardom and its reflected image in the press. For famous people are both neurotic and obsessed by perfection. In the case of Emma Thompson, she could sing, she could dance, she could act, she could clown, she wrote a 10,000 word dissertation on George Eliot - why the hell couldn't she have a perfect marriage, too?
At first, it seemed she could: OK, so Branagh wasn't a looker (Thompson once said he looked like a plumber), but, being the new Olivier and writing his autobiography before hitting 30 showed he had unbelievable talent and drive. They had a power wedding to match, at Cliveden, costing £30,000, a flurry of press releases, tight security and champagne socialism.
When any marriage starts going wrong, self worth crumbles. How much more so, then, for celebrity couples, whose egos are bigger, with further to fall. First they blame their unhappiness on the relentless speculation of the British press, their tormentor and their creator. Then they blame their unhappiness on the pressures of celebrity life, and spend a lot of time in health spas. When that doesn't work, they blame their spouse and have an affair, comprehensively documented by the News Of The World. Finally, they talk to Vanity Fair - psychotherapy for famous people - and admit that, actually, it's been going downhill for years.
Then they do it all over again. Why, isn't that Paula Yates posing with Michael Hutchence in Hello!?