From PEOPLE Magazine
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Forget that 20 months ago Brazilian model Luciana Morad, 31, bore a son by Jagger, or that in the wake of his breakup with Hall he claimed that their 1990 Hindu wedding ceremony on Bali wasn't even legal. Since then, the two have appeared jointly at daughter Georgia May's school sports day, Hall was by Jagger's side at his mother's funeral last May, and the rocker recently showed up to see Hall bare all in a West End stage production of The Graduate. "He's a great friend, just a lousy husband," an older but wiser Hall told Britain's The Sunday Times about her philandering ex. "Mick and I have great fun together now because the anger's gone. I don't expect him to behave in a certain way anymore."
No question it's the nasty divorce fights that make the big headlines—think the Trumps, the Bryant Gumbels, Patricia Duff and Ron Perelman. But a recent spate of A-list splits (Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid, Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew) seems to suggest that, these days at least, getting divorced doesn't necessarily mean shooting one's ex down in flames. Whether out of concern for the children or their own images, or even an aversion to outrageous attorneys' fees, a new celeb smart set is finding that the crockery needn't be broken when the marriage vows are. "After pretty ugly publicity, some clients have figured out that it's better to be civil to each other than carry on a Hundred Years War," suggests New York City public relations guru Howard Rubenstein, who has handled the bitter breakups of such clients as Donald Trump. In fact, adds sociologist Pepper Schwartz, author of the just-published Everything You Know About Love and Sex Is Wrong, celebs may have more reason than ordinary folk to keep up at least a veneer of civility. "There are so few people they can trust, so few people they can let inside behind the facade," she says. "Once they've gone through that with someone, that person's worth more."
That seems especially true of Fergie and Andrew, who appear to have become best buddies in the very same land where Henry VIII once exed out Anne Boleyn with a flick of the blade. Almost five years after their decade-long wedlock ended in a flurry of tabloid toesucking photos, Fergie, 41, and Andrew, 40, still live—albeit in separate bedrooms—in the same 25-room Sunninghill Park mansion the Queen built for them as a wedding present. He calls her "HRH," she leaves him loving voicemails, and at Christmas the two sent out a joint family card with the inscription, "We all hope that the New Year will bring laughter in your heart and joy in your soul." "We live in the same house, we have breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner together," Fergie—who shares parenting of Princesses Beatrice, 12, and Eugenie, 10, with the prince—told the British magazine Hello! She went on to call herself and her ex "the happiest divorced couple in the world."
It's all enough to give the paparazzi whiplash. On sighting the Jaggers and Yorks at a posh London gallery gala last June, celeb photographer Dave Benett sighed and said, "Strangely, the two happiest couples at the event were both divorced." Or maybe not so strangely. After Bruce Willis and Demi Moore parted ways 2½ years ago, he lived for a time in a guest house near the sprawling Hailey, Idaho, ranch occupied by Moore, 38, and the couple's three daughters, ages 6 through 12. Though she now dates Oliver Whitcomb, a local martial-arts instructor, and Willis, 45, recently ended a year-long relationship with Spanish model Maria Bravo, 33, he also bought a $1.1 million house 10 miles from Moore in 1999. "It was as amicable as anything I've ever heard of," he told Entertainment Tonight in November of his breakup with Moore. "I mean, we're still great friends, you know. We talk every day and still have three children that we have to raise and I'm very proud of the way we've handled it."
Kids are obviously a key factor for many famous former couples. Despite the painful June 28 announcement that their nine-year marriage was kaput, Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan made it clear that they'll behave civilly for the sake of their 8-year-old son, Jack Henry. Despite her much-publicized relationship with Aussie actor Russell Crowe, Ryan recently bought an $8.9 million Bel Air home just a few miles from the house she shared with Quaid in Brentwood, and the two still talk several times a week by phone and exchange pleasantries when meeting to pick up their son. "Despite the difficulties of the situation, these two people have focused on maintaining dignity for the sake of their son," says a source close to both. "Their child's well-being is the most important thing."
To that end, Ryan and Quaid, who friends say was devastated by news of Ryan's romance with Crowe, have since been seen taking Jack to a movie screening, shopping and church. They also plan to continue scheduling their movie assignments so that one parent is always home with the boy. Ryan "is a great mom—loving, caring and nurturing," Quaid, 45, told columnist Liz Smith. Ryan, 39, spoke equally warmly of her ex, who was recently seen on a just-friends museum outing with actress Andie MacDowell (split from her husband of 13 years, Paul Qualley, in 1999) and their respective kids. "We both behaved very honorably—in our marriage and in our breakup," Ryan said of Quaid in W magazine, dismissing reports of his alleged wandering eye. So far, the game plan seems to be working. The couple's final divorce decree, which could not be legally granted until six months after its filing, is now imminent, with Quaid retaining the couple's marital home and the Montana ranch that he owned before he married Ryan. The breakup "is going as amicably as any divorce I've ever seen and probably even more so," says a friend of Ryan's. "If every divorce was like this, divorce lawyers wouldn't make any money."
Chances are that some attorneys in the neighborhood of Nashville will pick up more than chump change in coming months as country crooner Garth Brooks, 38, and his wife, Sandy, 36, negotiate divvying up an estimated half-billion dollars in assets. Despite the dissolution of their sometimes rocky 14-year marriage, the two, who live in Nashville, are now both staying on a 400-acre Oklahoma property, some 20 miles from Sandy's parents and childhood home, that will be the site of a new, post-divorce house for her and the couple's kids, Taylor Mayne Pearl, 8, August Anna, 6, and Allie Colleen, 4. At the moment, Brooks resides in a small house on the site and Sandy occupies a doublewide trailer a mile and a half away, but the two still show up together at the local Atwoods, a farm supply store chain, and often dine together at Braum's restaurant outside Tulsa. "They ate supper here last Saturday," says one employee. "They were laughing and talking with the kids, just like anybody else."
Such harmony, of course, isn't solely the purview of the C&W set. After the breakup of their nine-year union in 1994, Billy Joel, now 51, and his Uptown Girl Christie Brinkley, 46, who have joint custody of daughter Alexa Ray, 15, suffered through typical post-split tensions. But Brinkley is now happily married to architect Peter Cook, 41, and the mother of daughter Sailor Lee, 2, and 5-year-old Jack (by husband No. 3 Ricky Taubman). And last winter it was Brinkley who set Joel up with their mutual acquaintance, Long Island TV anchor-reporter Trish Bergin, 29. "Christie called him up and said, 'Guess what? Trish isn't married any longer,' " says Joel's spokeswoman Claire Mercuri. Though she and Joel are no longer seeing one another, says Bergin, "we all just got along really well, and it worked out nicely."
In fact, some couples prove to be more successful as friends than as husbands and wives. Though Julia Roberts, now 33, stayed wed to singer Lyle Lovett, 43, for just 21 months, their friendship endures. They still chat regularly, even though he is courting his former personal assistant April Kimble, 26, and she has been steadily dating actor Benjamin Bratt for three years.
Perhaps the neophytes are simply learning what the veterans did long ago. Despite what Joan Collins, 67, terms a post-divorce "acrimonious period," her relationship with the late actor Anthony Newley, father of two of her three children, remained warm through the years. "We'd talk about once a week," Collins, who last spoke to Newley just 10 days before his death from cancer in April 1999, told PEOPLE at the time. "We always talked about the children and then we'd make each other laugh." In the case of actress Laura Dern's parents, Bruce Dern, 64, and Diane Ladd, 61, it took years to heal the wounds from a nine-year marriage that included the trauma of the 1962 drowning death of an 18-month-old daughter. But in 1999 Laura, born five years later and now 33, hosted a Thanksgiving dinner attended by her parents and their respective spouses. "As [Diane and I] both look back on it, we beat ourselves up a little bit and say, 'What the hell was wrong with us that we just didn't accept this and start this way right at the very beginning?' " Dern says of his ex. "But it took us a decade to get there."
Sometimes it's the hard times that bring out the best in a former spouse. In 1992, when Woody Allen left Mia Farrow for her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi, Mia's first and second husbands, Frank Sinatra and conductor André Previn, immediately called to see if there was anything they could do to help. "Frank wanted to break Woody's legs, and André offered his love and moral support," says Mia's former publicist and longtime friend John Springer. Today Farrow, 55, talks regularly to Previn, 71, who fathered three of her children (and with her adopted three more, including Soon-Yi) before their 1979 divorce. "They have remained close," says a friend. "She thinks he's a great guy."
Carly Simon, 55, married since 1987 to poet James Hart, drew similar support from her former husband, James Taylor, 52, after she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1997. "That's when they became really close again for the first time in years," says Ian Halperin, author of Fire and Rain: The James Taylor Story. "He rushed to her side. He was just devastated. During the time she was sick, they spoke on the phone a lot." Despite their difficult 1982 breakup and Taylor's current engagement to Boston Symphony Orchestra executive Caroline Smedvig, they lead "parallel lives," Simon has said. "We share the same children [Sally, 27, and Ben, 24], the same songs. How can you pull the weaves apart? And why would you want to?"
In the long run, kids may be the single greatest reason for post-split harmony—or at least the appearance of it. Kevin Costner, 45, who has lately been seen with model Christine Baumgartner, 26, on his arm, last year described his wife of 16 years, Cindy, 44, with whom he split in 1994, as "the woman of my life, and I can't imagine that bond ever being broken." The two, he also said, still "talk regularly. All the decisions regarding our children [Anne, 16, Lily, 14, and Joe, 12] are joint ones."
In 1996, the year after his second divorce from Melanie Griffith, now 43, and three years before his marriage to former schoolteacher Kelley Phleger, Don Johnson, 51, professed affection for the mother of their 11-year-old, Dakota. "Melanie's happiness directly relates to my children's happiness," he told ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY. "So I pray for her happiness like I pray for my own." Adds Johnson's rep, Elliot Mintz: "Does Don occasionally call Melanie up and say, 'Should we go to the movies or something?' That doesn't happen. But when it comes to issues of the children, the lines of communication are always open."
And today, in the wake of the 1997 split that ended their stormy 17-year live-in relationship, Farrah Fawcett, 53, and Ryan O'Neal, 59, seem to have simmered down for the welfare of their son Redmond, 15. Redmond, who went through a rocky period several years back, is, says Fawcett, now scoring A's and B's, and the improvement may well reflect a change in her own life. "I've never been friendly with any of my ex-boyfriends.... But it's happened with Ryan," she told New York's Daily News. "We had a passionate love affair and a breakup that was equally passionate.... Today, we passionately support each other."
A fine sentiment indeed, but making it work in practice can still be a trial. The Christmas before last, like many extended families trying to sort out arrangements for the holidays, two former Mrs. Rod Stewarts found themselves with a logistical problem. After her split from him in January 1999, wife No. 2, Rachel Hunter, was living not far away with their two kids Liam, 6, and Renée, 8, in a house in Beverly Hills. But ex-girlfriend and model Kelly Emberg, mother of Rod's daughter Ruby, 13, and Stewart's first wife, Alana, mother of Rod's kids Kimberly, 21, and Sean, 20, also lived in the L.A. area. So what to do about the traditional holiday get-together? "With divorced families, the kids are always trying to figure out, 'What time is Mom's dinner, what time is Dad's?' " says Alana, 55, recalling the way the three exes solved the conundrum. "It was Rachel's idea. She said, 'This is so complicated. Why don't we just do it at Rod's?' "
And so it was that the Stewart clan gathered for the holiday at Rod's own 25,000-sq.-ft., eight-bedroom mansion in Beverly Hills. Except for one singed turkey, there were no casualties. And according to Alana, an old hand at post-marital amicability (she settled her divorce from first husband, actor George Hamilton, over a burger and for just $750 in attorney fees), it was worth the effort.
"It's really good to keep the family together and on good terms," says daughter Kimberly, echoing what surely are the sentiments of many other children of divorce. "It's a lot better to celebrate one Christmas together than two Christmases apart."
Written by: Susan Schindehette
Reported by: Nina Biddle, Liz Corcoran, Caris Davis, Pete Norman and Simon Perry in London; Vickie Bane in Denver; Eve Heyn, Jennifer Longley, Bob Meadows and Sue Miller in New York City; Karen Brailsford, Michelle Caruso, Tom Cunneff, Mark Dagostino and Susan Christian Goulding in Los Angeles; Bob Stewart in Tulsa; Beverly Keel in Nashville; Keith Raether in Hailey
