Celebrity Age Gaps That Proved Controversial

When Jerry Lee Lewis first arrived at Heathrow Airport in May 1958, reporters were surprised to note that the “Great Balls of Fire” vocalist had a young girl at his side. The press asked who she was, and they were startled by her reply: “I'm Myra… Jerry's wife.” Just before the tour, Lewis (then 22) had secretly married his 13-year-old first cousin, Myra Gale Brown. 

Hoping to elevate the legal concerns that would undoubtedly follow, the couple pretended that she was 15 so that they could be somewhat legally wed (Lewis was also still legally bound to his second wife at the time). When the newlywed couple repeated the lie to the British press, they were met with outrage instead of acceptance. In the UK, 15 was still under the legal age to marry. 

Despite attempting to come back to the public eye's good graces by marrying Brown publicly later, the unsettling news all but ruined Lewis's career as a performer. Years later, Myra came forward with allegations that Lewis had committed adultery and abused her throughout their tumultuous marriage. 

Illegal in the United States but considered of age in their native France, Maïwenn Le Besco was only 16 when she married 32-year-old French film producer Luc Besson. Though the couple waited until Le Besco was considered an adult to be legally wed, the duo first met when Besson was 29 and she was 12. 

According to Maïwenn (who now goes by her first name only), Besson's film Leon: The Professional was based on their relationship. The film's plotline centers around a 12-year-old girl (Natalie Portman) who is rescued by a professional hitman (Jean Reno) after her family is murdered. 

When Steven Tyler first began dating Julia Holcomb, he was 27 and she was 16. The Aerosmith frontman was even awarded guardianship over his young girlfriend so that she could live with him and go on tours with the band during their three-year relationship that began in 1973. 

In his memoir, Tyler admitted: 

[I] almost took a teen bride… her parents fell in love with me, signed a paper over for me to have custody, so I wouldn’t get arrested if I took her out of state. I took her on tour with me… 

She was sixteen, she knew how to nasty… With my bad self being twenty-six and she barely old enough to drive and sexy as hell, I just fell madly in love with her. She was a cute skinny little tomboy dressed up as Little Bo Peep. She was my heart’s desire, my partner in crimes of passion.

In her 2022 lawsuit against the “Sweet Emotion” vocalist, Holcomb's lawyer argued: 

[She] was powerless to resist… [Tyler's] power, fame and substantial financial ability… [he] coerced and persuaded [the] Plaintiff into believing this was a “romantic love affair.”

Holcomb (now Julia Misley) clarified: 

I want this action to expose an industry that protects celebrity offenders, to cleanse and hold accountable an industry that both exploited and allowed me to be exploited for years, along with so many other naïve and vulnerable kids and adults…

Because I know that I am not the only one who suffered abuse in the music industry, I feel it is time for me to take this stand and bring this action, to speak up and stand in solidarity with the other survivors.

In April 2023, Tyler retaliated by responding to the claims, maintaining that the relationship shared between himself and Holcomb had been consensual. 

Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, who were married and divorced twice throughout their time together as a couple, first met on the set of The Harrad Experiment when Griffith was only 14 and Johnson was 22. Griffin's mother, Tippi Hedren, also starred in the film and recognized right away that her daughter had fallen for the much older man. 

Her motherly instincts were proven correct, as Griffith later recalled when she first met the Miami Vice star: 

We were in the stairwell of this Anheuser-Busch Estate waiting for a setup… We started chitchatting. I thought he was the most beautiful person I'd ever seen.

Hedren added: 

[I was in] sheer panic… How do you handle that? There was a very strong attachment between the two of them.

The unlikely couple moved in together when Griffith was only 15, became engaged on her 18th birthday, and were married just four years after their chance meeting in 1972. 

Despite their commitment to one another, Johnson showed no embarrassment in admitting that Griffith had not been his only interest the night of their wedding: 

I had been with [ex-Miss World] Marjorie Wallace most of the night… Melanie called at about 4 or 5 in the morning. We professed undying love and flew to Las Vegas and got married.

Jerry Seinfeld and Shoshanna Lonstein first met at Central Park in 1993. At the time, he was 38, and she was 17. Lonstein gave Seinfeld her number that day, and the two shared a four-year relationship before calling it quits. 

Despite their known relationship status, Seinfeld insisted that there was nothing sexual between the two of them until Lonstein turned 18. When Howard Stern first brought up the subject during an interview with Seinfeld, the radio host quipped: 

So, you sit in Central Park and have a candy bar on a string and pull it when the girls come?

To which Seinfeld replied, “She’s not 17, definitely not.” However, Seinfeld seemed to contradict himself on the same show a few months later when he admitted: 

I didn’t realize she was so young… This is the only girl I ever went out with who was that young. I wasn’t dating her. We just went to a restaurant, and that was it.

Years after their relationship was confirmed, Seinfeld finally recognized their relationship for what it was: 

I am not an idiot. Shoshanna is a person, not an age… She is extremely bright. She’s funny, sharp, very alert. We just get along. You can hear the click….

When I like someone, I don’t care about her race, creed or national origin. If I like her, I don’t care. I don’t discriminate. If she’s 18, if she’s intelligent, that’s fine.

When Dane Cook and his girlfriend of six years, Kelsi Taylor, tied the knot in 2023, the comedian professed his love for her in an X (formerly Twitter) post: 

Last night I married the girl of my dreams here in Hawaii… The greatest feeling in the world is knowing you've got the strongest person you could ever imagine by your side and giving them all of your love in return… The years of laughs, adventures and accomplishments we've shared were solidified in front of some of our dearest friends and family during an emotional ceremony. I can't wait to share more but for now just know this. I've never felt this way. It's so wonderful.

However, many fans, critics, and other celebrities found the relationship timeline offputting, considering that the two began dating when Cook was 45 and Taylor was 18. 

The couple reportedly met at a game night hosted by Cook when she was 17 and waited until she was of age to consider their relationship “official.”