One way to mark the passing of the year? By counting down the celebrity love stories — and breakups — that made headlines.
From the former Canadian prime minister and pop star to the divorce album that turned airing dirty laundry into toe-tapping bops, these are the celebrity couples (and uncouplings) that defined 2025.
Weirdest couple: Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau
If you can genuinely say you saw this one coming, we’d love your thoughts on the winning numbers for the next big lottery draw. While there’s a history of politicians pairing up with celebrities — JFK and (allegedly) Marilyn Monroe, for example — the news that Canadian ex-PM Justin Trudeau was on a date with musician/“astronaut” Katy Perry in Montreal this summer felt like just another AI hallucination tricking the internet. But, when images emerged in October of the pair intertwined on the deck of Perry’s yacht, even the most skeptical had to concede it was true, if only because even ChatGPT at its most unhinged couldn’t have dreamed up the strange detail of Trudeau shirtless but wearing formal dark denim jeans. Since then, the couple has taken their love story international: Hand-in-hand leaving the Crazy Horse cabaret in Paris, meeting the prime minister of Japan — he hard-launched the couple when he referred to Perry as Trudeau’s “partner” on Twitter — and making things Instagram official a few days later. Not only is Justin not the first politician to romance a famous singer, he’s also not the first Canadian PM to do so: He’s following in dad Pierre’s footsteps à la Trudeau-the-first dating Barbra Streisand in the late ’60s.
Biggest split: Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban
The news that Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman had divorced felt a bit like hearing one of your friends’ parents were splitting just after throwing that big golden wedding anniversary party. A love so enduring that it managed to make us all forget she was ever married to Tom Cruise, Kidman and Urban were together for 19 years, approximately three centuries in Hollywood time. (For context, they got married two years before Instagram even existed.) While officially they cited “irreconcilable differences,” TMZ claims that our Nic was trying to save the marriage, but it was ultimately Urban’s choice to move out.
Most acrimonious: Lily Allen and David Harbour
A punishingly candid tale of betrayal wrapped in some unbelievably hook-y pop songs, Lily Allen’s “West End Girl” left few prisoners. And while Duane Reade bags (memorably referenced in a scathing song about Harbour’s alleged extramarital sexual proclivities) and people named Madeline took major reputational hits, it was her ex-husband and “Stranger Things” star David Harbour who was this album’s true target. Though she’s said that not everything described on this album is totally true, Allen’s portrait of the end of their marriage — including essentially being coerced into an open relationship as punishment for her professional success — made Harbour’s press tour for the final season of “Stranger Things” deeply uncomfortable. (Not dissimilar to finding yourself humming the earworm “Pussy Palace,” which gave us lyrics like ““Sex toys, butt plugs, lube inside / Hundreds of Trojans, you’re so f-king broken / How’d I get caught up in your double life?”).
Most viral: The Coldplay Couple
Call it the kiss cam that ruined multiple lives and created the most reluctant now-celebrity couple of the year. An odd moment at a July Coldplay concert — where a couple went from swaying together to jumping apart and hiding their faces as soon as they were projected onto the Jumbotron for 66,000 fans to see — quickly became an object lesson in why you should never do anything in public that you wouldn’t want to see turned into a viral TikTok. (Chris Martin didn’t help matters by quipping to the Massachusetts crowd, “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.”) Within days, internet sleuths had tracked down the couple: Turns out not only were they married to other people, they were a tech company’s CEO (who quickly resigned) and its HR director.
Most heartwarming couple: Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson
There are so many things to swoon over when it comes to Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson’s love story. There’s the fact that Neeson, whose wife, Natasha Richardson, died in a ski accident in 2009, said he was “past all that” when asked about dating just last year. Or the fact that Anderson, after decades of working to rewrite the narrative about her life and decentre herself from the male gaze, was being celebrated for this late-blooming love on her own terms. And to anyone who claimed it was a PR stunt for their movie, the ”Naked Gun” remake? According to Pam herself, speaking to People, the two spent an “intimate week” together at Neeson’s home in the New York state countryside, where he took her out to dinner and introduced her as “the next Mrs. Neeson,” and he chased a bear from the garden wearing just his bathrobe while she watched. “If you must know, Liam and I were romantically involved for a short while but only after we finished filming,” she told the celebrity magazine, adding that their connection felt like a Nancy Meyers film before it ran its course. “I adore Liam, but we are better friends, in full honesty.”
Hottest couple: Zoe Kravitz and Harry Styles
The sheer combined sex appeal of this couple — Kravitz with effortless cool in her DNA, Styles charisma personified — is the sort of stuff that seems like it should rewrite the laws of physics, generating a wormhole made of hotness, at the very least. And yet, if pap shots are to be believed, these two incredibly attractive (and talented) people can not only exist within six feet of each other, it’s actually possible for them to get close enough to be in a relationship. And a serious one! After being spotted in Rome in July, they’ve been inseparable, even meeting up with Zoe’s dad, Lenny, in New York this fall.
Most surprisingly enduring: Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet
The odds have always been stacked against these two kids. After all, how many high-profile relationships between extremely famous 20-somethings go the distance? And yet, two years after rumours swirled at Paris Fashion Week in 2023, actor Timothée Chalamet and the youngest Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, are still together. In fact, they even went red carpet official this year, appearing together at an awards show in Rome.
