THE TOXIC BREAKUP OF BRAD PITT AND GWYNETH PALTROW AND THE "DARKEST MOMENT" THAT ENDED THEIR ENGAGEMENT
When Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow met playing husband and wife in the 1995 thriller Se7en, Gwyneth declared that it was "love at second sight."
He was 31 and one of Hollywood's biggest stars, she was only 22 and relatively unknown, and at first he mistook her flirtatiousness for friendliness.
Before long, everyone on set knew they were a couple, and a lovelorn Gwyneth confirmed it to the world when she said, "I'm really in love for the first time in my life...and I don't care if my old boyfriends read this."
The pair were obsessed with each other, turning down jobs to spend every possible second alone.
When Gwyneth wasn't on set she drank from a cup with Brad's face on it, and he described the forced separation of the "angel" from him as "A beast. A great hairy beast.
"Really, all I can tell you is that I've never been happier," Brad then said. "My girl has class"
The father of Gwyneth's Hollywood director, Bruce Paltrow, loved Brad like a son, and movie executive Meryl Poster was one of many people who were in awe of the young couple's romance.
“Her loving relationship of hers with Brad gives her strength. It's not because he's a superstar, but because he's completely in love with her," he told Us Magazine.
"They are so madly in love. It's like there's enough love between the two of them for everyone here."
The fairy tale reached its crescendo in December 1997, when Brad proposed to her after two years of dating at a time he described as "one of the best" of her life.
But that proposal turned out to be a turning point for the couple, whose relationship suddenly began to unravel.
The problem, Gwyneth said, was that she backed down, fearing that at 25 she was simply too young to settle down.
"I think she was a girl and she wasn't ready. She was too good for me," Paltrow told The Howard Stern Show in 2015. "I honestly think, she was too young and didn't know what she was doing.
«I mean that she was 22 years old when we met and she has taken me until I was 40 to get my head out of my ass. You can't make a decision when you're 22."
Admitting her relationship was 'not healthy', Gwyneth said certain things happened between the two that made her 'hate' herself.
Rumors that she had been unfaithful to her Sliding Doors co-star John Hannah are unfounded. And while Gwyneth never spoke out about the gossip, she did take the blame for the toxic breakup and "darkest moment of it."
"My kind of internal stuff really tripped up that whole relationship and I felt really responsible and also like I was the architect of my own misery and I just made a big mess of it," she said.
And Jean Black, Brad's longtime friend, said her behavior raised a lot of red flags.
"I think there were a lot of things that made Brad feel like Gwyneth wasn't ready for marriage," she said.
However, when the breakup finally occurred, Gwyneth was so distraught that she refused to work and she nearly lost her Oscar-winning role in Shakespeare In Love.
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She told Vanity Fair: "It really changed my life. When we parted, something changed permanently in me. My heart was broken that day and it will never be the same again."
The following year, Brad met Jennifer Aniston, while Gwyneth dated Ben Affleck before marrying Coldplay's Chris Martin in 2003.
They knowingly broke up in 2014 and she is now married to Glee producer Brad Falchuck.
