COMMITMENTS : In Hollywood, There’s Always a Death Scene

Marriages made in Hollywood conform to the simplest rules of script writing: They all have a beginning, a middle and, inevitably, an end.

Tuesday, Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett became the latest Tinseltown couple to issue a statement that waffles on about remaining “close and in great support of each other.” In other words, after less than two years of marriage they are legally separating.

Movie stars and monogamy go together like cornflakes and Tabasco. In the past year we have endured the splits of Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford, Whoopi Goldberg and Ted Danson, Roseanne and Tom Arnold, Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley. But just as the royal family knows you should get straight back on a horse after a fall, most have already returned to the registry office, vowing that this time it is forever.

It is not as if the “Pretty Woman” and her country music-singing husband will be wondering how they will ever get used to sleeping alone. In their 21 months of marriage, the couple barely saw each other and were usually working thousands of miles apart.

Such stories are rarely greeted with sobs. We know these sacrifices are the downside of multimillion-dollar contracts. More importantly, we suspect that such unions had little to do with passion in the first place, and everything to do with magazine covers and improved ratings.

In Hollywood, a marriage is not for life, but until you find a new agent; a celebrity spouse is just as much of an accessory as a Prada handbag, to be discarded with each new season. “This is the only place in the world where an amicable divorce means that each gets 50% of the publicity,” Lauren Bacall once said.

None of these stars is on the bread line, yet they still seem compelled to exploit their so-called heartbreak. On Saturday night, America was treated to the multimillionaire Donald Trump and his acrimonious ex-wife, Ivana, kissing and making up on television in an advertisement for Pizza Hut, for which they were paid $1 million each. “You just can’t turn down that kind of money,” he said.

A price cannot be put on a reputation, however--as Michael Jackson discovered when rumors began to flourish about his alleged fondness for little boys. He quickly distracted the gossip mill by “secretly” marrying Elvis’ daughter, Lisa Marie. The ring was scarcely on her finger before divorce talk began, but no matter, the damage had been limited.