Angelina Jolie and Jonny Lee Miller divorced 22 years ago today, but the actress hoped that one day they'd tie the knot again
Angelina Jolie is of course best known for the whole Brangelina saga that saw her get with Brad Pitt after his dramatic split from Jennifer Aniston.
But almost a decade before that, a 20 year old Angelina was married to another actor - British Trainspotting star Jonny Lee Miller.
The pair - whose divorce was finalised 22 years ago today - met
as two unknowns on the set of 1995 film Hackers, where they shared a flat
and fell head over heels for each other.
Within a matter of
months and despite being barely more than teenagers, they made a pact to get
married.
"We both proposed to each other and both had questions
to ask," she previously told The Sun.
"I wondered if we should
stay engaged for a while since he was going to be in Britain and I would
stay in LA. But we went for a quick wedding."
On March 28, 1996,
they tied the knot in a tiny civil ceremony with only her mother Marcheline
Bertrand and Jonny's best friend present.
There wasn't a white dress in sight with Ange instead wearing
black rubber pants and one of her finance's white shirts with his name
scrawled across the back in her own blood - which she told the New York
Times she extracted 'very carefully' with a 'clean surgical needle'.
Why?
"It's your husband," she said of her groom who wore black leather.
"You're
about to marry him. You can sacrifice a little to make it really
special."
There was one nod to tradition though thanks to
Surrey-born Jonny.
She continued: "I had pants with a zipper that
goes back to front. He stuck a veil on me at the last second and put a
garter on the pants.”
Jonny moved from London to LA to be with his new wife, but
free-spirited Angelina immediately chafed against the intimacy of marriage,
explaining that she felt like she lost her identity.
"You're
suddenly somebody's wife. And you're like, 'Oh, I'm half of a couple now.
I've lost me,'" she was quoted as saying.
"We went on some
morning show, and they threw rice on us and they gave us toasters. I was
thinking, 'I need to get myself back.'"
Then after just one year
of marriage, the couple decided to split, with Jonny moving back to
London.
Angelina said she took full responsibility for their
separation, telling the Calgary Sun that when it came to love, she found it
hard to be "present enough, physically or emotionally, in relationships to
get serious."
The mother-of-six explained: "It's not fair to the
other person that I'm so busy with my career and that I'm often distant even
when I am with someone.
"Jonny and I never fought and we never
hurt each other. I really wanted to be his wife. I really wanted to
commit.
"We were living side by side, but we had separate lives.
I wanted more for him than I could give. He deserves more than I am prepared
to give at this time in my life, but there is a very good possibility that
we could get married again some time in the future."
As for
Jonny, he remains on good terms with Angelina and even attended the 2011
premier of her directorial debut, In The Land of Blood and Honey.
And
the star - who is now married to Law & Order actress Michele Hicks - has
said he has 'no regrets or bitterness' about their whirlwind romance,
confirming that it just wasn't meant to be.
"Marriage was
something that didn’t work out, and I had to make the decision sooner or
later. I decided to make it sooner," he added, according to Heavy.com.
Angelina
subsequently married Billy Bob Thornton. But she once told B magazine that
divorcing Jonny "was probably the dumbest thing I've ever done."
