LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Laura Dern is undoubtedly one of the most acclaimed actors in Hollywood. After making her debut in 1974, the 56-year-old star delivered a string of magnificent performances in movies including 'Jurassic Park', 'Wild at Heart' and 'Marriage Story'. However, while Dern enjoyed a dynamic career, her love life was not that pleasant.
The 'Little Women' star has reportedly had several heartbreaks due to men she deeply loved and even lost her fiance to Angelina Jolie, whom she used to babysit back in the time. Prior to her marriage to musician Ben Harper in 2000, Dern was engaged to her 'Ellen' co-star Billy Bob Thornton. The couple first met during the taping of Ellen DeGeneres' sitcom in 1997 when Dern had recently broken up with Jeff Goldblum, and Thornton was in the middle of divorcing his fourth wife, Pietra Dawn Cherniak, according to Little Things.
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Soon, Dern and Thornton were madly in love with each other and got engaged. They had been together for three years and Dern was well on the way to becoming Thornton’s fifth wife when their relationship fell apart. In 1999, the ex-couple left their shared home to film their respective movies, with Dern blindly trusting her loyal fiance. However, Thornton reportedly broke her trust and married his ‘Pushing Tin’ co-star Angelina Jolie, who was 20 years younger. Thornton and Jolie exchanged vows at a private ceremony in Las Vegas, where they reportedly wore vials of each other's blood around their necks, according to Your Tango.
'It’s like a sudden death'
The Thronton-Jolie wedding left everyone shocked, but nobody was as as surprised as Dern, who did not have even an inkling about her ex-fiance's romance with Jolie. At that time, the ‘Jurassic Park’ star admitted that she had no idea her relationship was over until she heard about the marriage. Dern also noted that Thornton ghosted her in the process and she never heard from him again. “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," Dern said during an interview, according to ABC.
The actress went on to reveal that one of the most painful parts of the situation was that she never got any closure. "It’s like a sudden death. For no one has there been any closure or clarity,” she said.
To make matters worse, it was later revealed that Dern and Jolie shared a close bond as she used to babysit her when she was a child. This was revealed by Dern's actor father, Bruce, who said he was close friends with Jolie’s father Jon Voight. "Jon Voight's a friend of mine, so I remember Laura babysat one night for Angelina when Angelina was two and Laura about eight because Jon and I were doing [a movie together called] Coming Home. They were staying over at [director] Hal Ashby's house, so they asked [Laura] to come over [to watch Angie],” he said, according to the Mirror.
'I've f****d a lot of things up'
In 2016, Dern’s close friend Melissa Etheridge called the former-couple's situation "nasty" and gave some details about their split. "I was around when Angelina was not doing nice things with Billy Bob to Laura Dern," she said on Sirius XM radio show, per The Sun, adding, "I helped Laura move out of her house with Billy Bob – I like broke into their home to get their stuff out because it was so nasty."
Thornton opened up about the situation with Dern and admitted he had "f****d up." "See, I've f****d a lot of things up. I've been wrong. In relationships, I've been, like, not present. Or doing some wrong things. I don't want to construct when I love when I write. I don't want to go to couples therapy to solve a relationship. I don't want to work on it. I don't believe in it, never have. Others may say that you left our girl and married someone else. But it made me happy and somebody else happy. I'm sorry it caused pain,” he told the Guardian. However, Thornton’s marriage to Jolie didn’t last long as they ended their three-year-old marriage in 2003. Dern married musician Ben Harper in 2005 and they welcomed two children together before they split in 2010.
