For Halle Berry, history tells all. On Tuesday, Oct. 27, the Oscar-winning star and her husband, Olivier Martinez, announced to Us Weekly that they were divorcing after two years of marriage.
This is Berry’s fourth split and third divorce in the last two decades. In addition to Martinez, the 49-year-old actress has dealt with her fair share of romantic highs and lows with former flames like David Justice, Gabriel Aubry, and Eric Benet. Here, Us takes a look back at Berry’s past relationships.
David Justice
In 1993, then a virtual unknown in Hollywood, former beauty queen-turned-actress Berry married the tall and handsome baseball player. By their third wedding anniversary, the couple knew that the fairy tale was over — and the split was anything but amicable. The actress filed a restraining order against the athlete in October 1996, after he reportedly stood outside of their Hollywood Hills home threatening entry.
Berry, who was 29 at the time of the divorce, had a hard time recovering from that marriage. The Monster’s Ball star revealed nearly a decade later that she attempted to commit suicide at the time. “I was sitting in my car, and I knew the gas was coming when I had an image of my mother finding me,” she recalled to Parade in 2007. “She sacrificed so much for her children, and to end my life would be an incredibly selfish thing to do.”
Eric Benet
Berry wed the R&B singer in 2001, but their love story similarly ended in divorce court in 2005, after it was revealed that Benet had cheated on his wife just two years into their marriage. He subsequently checked into rehab for sex addiction, which he addressed in a September 2008 interview with New York Magazine.
“Sex addiction is a real thing, you know,” the remarried dad of three reflected. “In retrospect, it’s not what I would label my situation.” Instead, Benet described the demise of their marriage as “making some stupid-ass, stupid-ass mistakes” on his part.
Gabriel Aubry
After two failed marriages and intensive counseling, Berry found a fresh start in French-Canadian model Gabriel Aubry, whom she met at a Versace photo shoot in 2005. However, their relationship was anything but picture-perfect.
The parents of Nahla, now 7, who were together from 2005 to 2010, engaged in an ugly public battle over who would gain custody of their young daughter. The situation got so intense that Aubry and Berry’s then-boyfriend, Martinez, engaged in a physical brawl on Thanksgiving Day 2012. A week later, Berry and Aubry finally reached a custody agreement. In June 2014, the A-list actress was ordered to pay Aubry a whopping $16,000 per month in child support after a judge ruled that Berry could not move their daughter to France full-time.
Olivier Martinez
The same year she split from Aubry, Berry found solace in the arms of her handsome Dark Tide costar Martinez. Given her rocky relationship history, the actress vowed at the time to never get married again, but Martinez swayed her to make another leap of faith. “Who knew? I swore marriage off, right?” she told Extra in April 2012. “Never say never, people!”
They married in July 2013, and welcomed their son, Maceo, three months later.
After two years of marriage, the couple announced on Oct. 27, that their marriage was over. “It is with a heavy heart that we have come to the decision to divorce,” they told Us Weekly in a joint statement on Tuesday. “We move forward with love and respect for one another and the shared focus for what is best for our son. We wish each other nothing but happiness in life, and we hope that you respect our, and most importantly our children’s privacy, as we go through this difficult period.”
