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Emmy Rossum Says Ex-Husband Justin Siegel Gave Her Marriage Ultimatum

Watch: What Emmy Rossum Did to Escape The Crowded Room’s “Very Dark” Plot

Emmy Rossum experienced a great divide with her ex-husband

Almost 16 years after the Shameless alum finalized her divorce from JustinSiegel, she revealed that the music producer had given her an ultimatum about their relationship, which ultimately led to their February 2008 marriage.

“I started dating Justin, and he worked at Interscope Records that I was signed to,” Rossum shared on the July 8 episode of Call Her Daddy. “And we were dating for maybe a couple months. We liked each other.”

Shortly after they started dating, the 39-year-old booked a role in the 2009 film Dragonball: Evolution, which was filming in Durango, Mexico, for six months.

“I remember the day that I was going away to make the movie,” Rossum recalled, “he said something to me like, ‘I don’t know if the relationship is gonna survive the distance. So maybe we should break up or get married.’”

“I literally had a flight that night to Durango, Mexico,” she continued. “At that moment, I thought to myself, ‘Well, I’m just coming off these two really rough heartbreaks.’ Abandonment is my core wound. I don’t want that. That hurts me.”

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Plus, as the Phantom of the Opera actress thought to herself at the time, “‘Divorce doesn’t seem that complicated. Like, it’s probably pretty straightforward.’”

Equally straightforward was the former couple’s quick wedding, as Siegel “literally printed out a marriage contract online and got some guy on the internet to come over” to Rossum’s home.

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“I found a white turtleneck that was in my closet and threw it on ‘cause I was like, ‘This is appropriate, right?’” she shared. “Literally not hearing the smoke detector in my head being like, ‘Don’t do this. You don’t have to do this.’”

“It was my intention not to tell anybody,” the Angelyne actress said, “because I knew in my gut it wasn’t right.”

The two remained married while Rossum filmed in Mexico—though she said Siegel never came to visit her—and once she got home, “it became abundantly clear we weren’t a match in any way.”

And she had been so tight-lipped about the marriage, that her own mother didn’t learn about it until she and Siegel had made the decision to split, with him filing for divorce in September 2009.

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“I told my mom, ‘Hey, I’m breaking up with Justin, and I need a lawyer.’ She was like, ‘You did not.’ I was like, ‘I did,’” Rossum remembered. “And my mom has always been somebody that mobilizes. If anyone is going through a breakup—my mom is not employed right now—so, if you need someone to show up, she’ll send you for a manicure and be like, ‘I have the U-Haul. Go take care of yourself.’”

Of course, she was grateful that her mother was able to help her navigate the end of the marriage.

Rossum went on to date Counting Crows singer AdamDuritz from 2009 to 2010 before meeting now-husband Sam Esmail in 2013. The two married in 2017 and share a daughter, 5, and son, 3, whose names have not been shared publicly.

For a look at more surprising celebrity couples, keep reading.

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Brad Pitt and Juliette LewisThey played doomed lovers twice, in 1990’s Too Young to Die? and 1993’s Kalifornia, but in real life they had a perfectly lovely relationship.”I still love the woman,” Pitt, who was Lewis’ date to the 1992 Oscars when she scored a Supporting Actress nomination for Cape Fear, told Vanity Fair in February 1995. “There’s some real genius there. I had a great time with her…It was one of the greatest relationships I’ve ever been in. The problem is, we grow up with this vision that love conquers all, and that’s just not so, is it?”

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Winona Ryder and Matt DamonIt wasn’t just a Gen X fever dream, they really closed out the 20th century as a couple after, legend has it, being introduced by Gwyneth Paltrow (who famously dated Damon’s best bud Ben Affleck). They split up in 2000.After the fact, Damon called Ryder a “great woman” in a 2004 Playboy interview, while Ryder told Black Book in 2009, “Matt couldn’t be a greater, nicer guy. I’m really lucky that I’m on good terms with him.”

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Cameron Diaz and Justin TimberlakeThere was something about their chemistry at the 2003 Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards, where Diaz presented Timberlake with the award for Best Burp—because they dated for almost four years, seriously enough to issue a statement when their relationship ended in 2007, “mutually and as friends, with continued love and respect for one another.”

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Alec Baldwin and Kristin DavisThe most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself, but Sex and the City alum Kristin Davis still had a good time dating Alec Baldwin when she was starring on the HBO series. Referencing an old flame who ended things after she loaned him $5,000, Kristin made it clear on a February 2025 episode of the Literally! With Rob Lowe podcast that the mystery man was definitively not the three-time Emmy winner. “Alec Baldwin was so rich by the time I dated Alec Baldwin,” Kristin shared. “I would have never needed to lend Alec $5,000. Oh my God.”

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David Moscow and Kerry WashingtonThe Scandal star appeared on the cover of InStyle Weddings in 2005 when she was engaged to the Big actor, but they split up in 2007.

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Madonna and Tupac ShakurMadonna never addressed the story that she dated the rapper, who was killed in 1996 when he was only 25, until 2015. When Howard Stern brought up her infamously feisty 1994 chat with David Letterman, she explained, “I was dating Tupac at the time, and the thing is…he got me all riled up on life in general.”

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Jake Gyllenhaal and Reese WitherspoonAfter her divorce from Ryan Phillippe and before marrying agent Jim Toth, Reese starred with Jake in the 2007 thriller Rendition and they dated for a couple of years.”She is, as I would say about most of the women who I’m close friends with or had relationships in my life,” Jake said admiringly of his ex, “one of the smartest, strongest people I’ve ever met.”

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Jesse Metcalfe and Scheana ShayThe Vanderpump Rules alum detailed her mid-2000s romance with the Desperate Housewives actor in her 2025 memoir My Good Side.“We would order in dinner with his parents at his house, and—when we were alone—he would play the guitar and serenade me with songs like ‘Hey There Delilah,’” she wrote. “It felt like I was living a real-life fantasy with this guy I’d watched on TV and in movies for years.”

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Meg Tilly and Colin FirthBefore marrying Livia Giuggioli in 1997 (they separated in 2019), Firth had a five-year relationship with Tilly. Their son William Joseph Firth, born Sept. 20, 1990, is also an actor who appeared with his father in Bridget Jones’s Baby.

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Mandy Moore and Andy RoddickThis was them: The U.S. Open champ courted the A Walk to Remember star between 2003 and 2004, but ultimately it wasn’t a love match.”He broke my heart,” Moore told Howard Stern in 2018. “I was a kid, he was a kid. I started dating him when I was 18.”

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Dave Coulier and Alanis MorissetteYou oughta know by now that one of the most enduring mysteries in music history is who exactly inspired Morissette’s iconic 1995 single “Ironic”—and the Full House star is at the top of the list of maybes! Morissette denied it in the 2021 documentary Jagged, but that’s a tough pill to swallow.

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Alanis Morissette and Ryan Reynolds”Oh yeah, I love her music,” Reynolds told People of his then-fiancée in 2005. “It can be awkward when she walks in and I’m listening to it in my underwear dancing.”The music stopped for the Canadians in 2007, but their breakup after four years together was very polite.

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January Jones and Jason SudeikisYou can’t blame the Mad Men star for liking funny guys. Jones and Sudeikis dated for a few months in 2010, five years before she briefly romanced Will Forte.

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Minnie Driver and Matt DamonThe Good Will Hunting stars paired off in real life, too, but they didn’t drive off into the sunset together.”Well, I’m single,” Damon said on The Oprah Winfrey Show in January 1998. “I was with Minnie for a while, but we’re not really romantically involved anymore. We’re just really good friends, and I love her dearly….I care about her a lot. We care about each other a lot. It wasn’t meant to be, you know? And if it’s not meant to be, then it’s not meant to be.”The pronouncement was a bit too public for Driver’s taste. “It’s unfortunate that Matt went on Oprah,” she told the LA Times later that year. “It seemed like a good forum for him to announce to the world that we were no longer together, which I found fantastically inappropriate.”

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Helen Mirren and Liam NeesonThe stars met on the set of the 1981 movie Excalibur and eventually lived together (Neeson says Mirren gave him his first driving lessons) before they broke up in the mid-’80s.”I should be so lucky and be honored to have spent three or four years with that lady,” Neeson told ET Canada in February 2023. “She’s really something else.”

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Jeff Goldblum and Laura DernFinding love in Jurassic Park? What a meat cute.The co-stars began dating after filming the 1993 blockbuster, with Goldblum telling The Chicago Tribune at the time, “I was struck, I’d been a big fan of hers. I think she’s an amazing actress, and a spectacular person. I was struck from the beginning. But after the movie we realized we liked each other.”They got engaged in 1995 but ultimately split two years later. They reunited on-screen for the first time in 2022’s Jurassic World: Dominion, the sixth installment in the franchise.

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Gillian Anderson and Peter MorganThe X-Files alum was in a relationship with The Crown creator between 2016 and 2020. Anderson won an Emmy for her turn as Margaret Thatcher in the Netflix hit in 2020.

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David Arquette and Ellen BarkinAccording to Arquette, the two dated while filming their 1995 Western Wild Bill.

Amy Sussman/Getty Images/Matt Petit/A.M.P.A.S. via Getty Images

Jeremy Sisto and Reese WitherspoonThe Clueless actor confirmed a little-known rumor during a Reddit AMA chat in November 2015, revealing that he used to date the actress. The two had starred in the 1992 TV movie Desperate Choices: To Save My Child.”She was my first actress girlfriend,” he said. “We had a long distance relationship for a long time. I was so into her.”

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Bethenny Frankel and Eric StonestreetE! News exclusively broke the news that the Real Housewives of New York star and Modern Family actor were a pair in 2015. But by the following year, they had split.

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Regina King and Malcolm-Jamal WarnerThe Southland alum and the actor, who played Theo Huxtable on The Cosby Show, dated for several years before calling it quits in 2013.

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Kelly Preston and George ClooneyThe famous bachelor was actually settled in with Preston pre-John Travolta back in 1987. They even lived together and shared a potbellied pig named Max before breaking up in 1989.

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Val Kilmer and CherWhy, yes, she does believe in life after love. The late Top Gun star and the legendary diva dated back in the ’80s following her divorces from Sonny Bono and Gregg Allman.

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Seal and Tyra BanksBefore he was Heidi Klum‘s ex, the “Kiss from a Rose” musician romanced a different supermodel.

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Meagan Good and Joseph Gordon-LevittThe duo reportedly started dating after meeting on the set of the 2005 film Brick, but they only stayed together for six months.

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Joshua Jackson and Rosario DawsonThe Dawson’s Creek alum and the Josie and the Pussycats star dated for about a year back in 2002.

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Chris O’Donnell and Reese WitherspoonThe NCIS: LA stud and America’s sweetheart dated way back in 1993, when 17-year-old Witherspoon first moved to Los Angeles.

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Sarah Jessica Parker and Robert Downey Jr.The man who now rocks the Iron Man suit for Marvel admitted that drugs and alcohol were to blame for the end of his seven-year relationship with the Sex and the City star. “I liked to drink, and I had a drug problem, and that didn’t jibe with Sarah Jessica,” he admitted in an a 2008 interview with Parade, “because it is the furthest thing from what she is. She tried to help me. She was so miffed when I didn’t get my act together.”

M. Caulfield/WireImage for Bragman Nyman Cafarelli

Matthew Perry and Heather GrahamThe late Friends alum and The Hangover star supposedly had a fling 2003, but it didn’t last long enough to be more than a little blip on the Hollywood hookup radar.

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Tom Hiddleston and Kat DenningsThe 2 Broke Girls actress dated her Thor costar briefly in 2010, appearing very cozy while attending Comic-Con to promote the Marvel film. But their relationship fizzled by the timethe movie premiered the following year.

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