Actors whose chemistry with their co-stars was irresistible

It was reported this week that Broadchurch actor Andrew Buchan has left his wife of 11 years, Amy Nuttall, after falling for Laila Farzad on the set of BBC cop drama Better.

The actor, 44, has reportedly moved in with Farzad, 40, after the pair grew close while filming the first series of the drama, leaving Nuttall ‘crushed’ by the end of her marriage, The Sun has reported.

As details emerge of Buchan and Farzad’s alleged affair, they are just one story in a series of couples who got together after becoming entangled in clandestine relationships on set after the chemistry became too strong to deny.

Many of the trysts left a string of broken hearts along the way as actors who were already in relationships left their partners of several years to follow their hearts. 

But the affairs didn’t always have happy endings, with few couples standing the test of time, and some dalliances being over before they had even got off the ground.

Buchan was married to Downton Abbey star Amy Nuttall for 11 years (couple pictured at the BAFTAs in 2017) but he is now said to have moved out of the family home

Here, FEMAIL lists the stars who left their partners for co-stars…

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (pictured at the premiere of Changeling) met on the set of Mr & Mrs Smith in 2004 and sparks flew

Before meeting and falling for Jolie, Brad Pitt had been married to Jennifer Aniston for five years (pictured at the 2000 Oscars)

Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston were arguably Hollywood’s hottest power couple. After meeting in 1994 and going on to date four years later.

The pair had each called it quits with famous partners before their first date in 1998, with Pitt recently calling off his engagement with Gwyneth Paltrow and Aniston splitting with Friends co-star Tate Donovan.

After marrying in 2000, the couple were in high demand, and Friends fans were delighted to see Pitt appear in a Thanksgiving episode of the sitcom in 2001 in which he played Will, Rachel’s nemesis from high school.

However, in a twist no one saw coming, the marriage came to an abrupt end in 2005 after Pitt was cast alongside Angelina Jolie in Mr & Mrs Smith.

The pair played a couple of undercover assassins in a seemingly mundane relationship, with each character having no idea the other is a spy. As the plot unfolds, they realise they have each been assigned to kill the other.

As rumours started to swirl around the actors and chemistry began to build, Pitt and Aniston announced their separation on 7 January 2005, stressing they had every intention of remaining friends.

By April of that year, Pitt and Jolie were spotted holidaying together in Kenya, before they went public with their relationship in a magazine spread in July.

Before long there was a new power couple in town, with the pair announcing they were expecting their first child together just three months after Pitt and Aniston’s divorce was finalised.

The couple, who were soon dubbed ‘Brangelina’, eventually became parents of six, a mix of biological and adopted children.

In 2012, Jolie was spotted wearing an engagement ring reported to be worth around $1 million, with her agent confirming the couple were due to tie the knot but had not yet set a date. In August 2014, they wed in a ceremony featuring their six children.

However, after more than a decade together, the couple split up in August 2016, two years after their wedding. Jolie filed for divorce citing irreconcilable differences. 

A bitter custody battle ensued as the couple, said to have different parenting styles, fought it out in the courts over their divorce settlement.

In October last year, amid an ongoing battle over a winery in France Brangelina owned together, court papers filed by Jolie alleged Pitt had been violent towards her and the children during a flight on a private jet in 2016, with the actress filing for divorce days later.

Pitt has repeatedly denied this allegation.

Kenneth Branagh and Helena Bonham-Carter

Kenneth Branagh and Helena Bonham Carter (pictured at the premiere for Love Labours Lost) met and got together on set of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh had been married for six years before Branagh’s infidelity, which Thompson has later said left her ‘half alive’

Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson first met in 1987 when they met on the set of series Fortunes of War. Two years later, they tied the knot in a lavish ceremony at Cliveden House.

Both considered stalwarts of British film and theatre, the couple seemed like the perfect match. So it came as a huge shock to the public in 1995 when they announced they were getting divorced.

They cited conflicting work schedules as their reason for the split, however behind closed doors, something else had been brewing.

Weeks after they announced their split to the public, it emerged the marriage had been rocked by a cheating scandal as Branagh had had an affair with Helena Bonham-Carter on the set of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Following the break-up of his marriage, Branagh pursued his relationship with Bonham-Carter and the pair continued to date until 1999 before calling it a day.

Thompson, who went on to star in the Harry Potter films alongside her ex-husband’s clandestine lover, has revealed in recent years how she had been affected by news of the affair while she was filming Sense and Sensibility – the screenplay of which earnt her an Oscar.

She told The New Yorker last year: ‘I was utterly, utterly blind to the fact that he had relationships with other women on set.’

The actress added: ‘I was half alive. Any sense of being a lovable or worthy person had gone completely.’ 

She revealed her own co-star on the film, Greg Wise, helped her pick up the pieces of her life after being devastated by her then-husband’s affair. In 2003, she married Wise. 

Despite being broken by Branagh’s betrayal, Thompson has never made a disparaging comment about her love rival Bonham-Carter. Speaking to the Sunday Times in 2013, she even likened herself to the eccentric actress.

‘Oh we are [similar]. Being slightly mad and a bit fashion-challenged. Perhaps that’s why Ken loved us both. She’s a wonderful woman, Helena,’ Thompson told the newspaper.

Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield 

Emma Stone and Andrew Garfied (pictured on set of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in 2013) did not confirm their relationship for several months

Before meeting Garfield, Stone had been in a relationship with Succession star Kieran Culkin for two years 

Garfield was also in a relationship when he first met Stone, and had been dating Shannon Marie Woodward for several years

When Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield first began dating, they were a picture perfect couple as they stole the show in various red carpet appearances.

For comic book fans, it was the perfect pairing as the actors, who played Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy in The Amazing Spiderman.

However, their perfect love story got off to a somewhat bumpy start as both actors were in relationships when they first met in 2011. 

While Stone had been dating Succession star Kieran Culkin for two years, Garfield was in a relationship with Westworld actress Shannon Woodward.

However, both Stone and Garfield broke up with their partners in April 2011, leaving each of them single. By the summer of that year, rumours began to swirl that the pair were dating.

The couple made a joint appearance at fan convention Comic Con in July 2011 to promote the film, but they remained tight-lipped about their relationship status as rumours got louder.

In November of that year, Garfield joined Stone onstage as she hosted Saturday Night Live, sending fans wild as they joked with each other.

It was several more months before the pair confirmed their relationship, even keeping quiet when photos emerged of them holding hands and passionately smooching while out and about in New York.

However in April 2012 the couple finally put fans out of their misery and confirmed their romance by making their first joint red carpet appearance at the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards.

Stone and Garfield continued to date for around three to four years before going their separate ways. It is not confirmed exactly when the pair split as they were as private about their separation as they were about their initial union, but by 2016, the couple had each moved on.  

Dominic West and Lily James 

Dominic West and Lily James were spotted canoodling on a weekend away in Rome in 2020, despite West being married

West remains married to Catherine Fitzgerald after the pair put on a bizarre show of solidarity outside their home in The Cotswolds following the release of the photos of The Affair actor with James

When photos emerged of married actor Dominic West, 53, and co-star Lily James, 33, canoodling in Rome in 2020, fans were left reeling.

The pair had been filming for TV drama The Pursuit of Love in which they played father and daughter, but it seems that off-camera, sparks had flown between them.

It was not the first time the actors had met – and had previously appeared together onstage at the  

The attraction between the actors appeared so strong that photos showed them jetting off to Rome during the Covid pandemic, where they were spotted riding an electric scooter together and smooching while dining al fresco.

After the photos emerged, sources claimed West’s wife Catherine Fitzgerald, to whom he has been married since 2010, had made up her mind and was ready to leave her husband as a result of his betrayal.

Friends told The Sun she was ‘ready to pull the plug’ on the marriage, adding: ‘She has since told the people closest to her their marriage is as good as over now and she doesn’t think there is a way past this.’

However, a story which had already left fans shocked still had a few more surprises in store as even more bizarre twists and turns followed.

As the media waited outside their home in The Cotswolds, the couple walked outside to reporters whole holding hands. Then Fitzgerald handed reporters a note which read: ‘Our marriage is strong and we’re very much still together. Thank you’ before kissing West. The couple then headed back inside the house.

Since the scandal, West and Fitzgerald remain married, with The Crown and The Affair actor reported to have planned a lavish 50th birthday party for Fitzgerald the following year to ‘make her feel special again’.

A source told MailOnline: ‘Dominic has been doing everything he can to make things up to Catherine, she stuck by him throughout the toughest time in their marriage.’

Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher

Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher were involved in an ‘intense’ three-month affair while working on the Star Wars films and playing on-screen lovers Princess Leia and Han Solo, she revealed in her memoir in 2016

At the time of the affair Ford, then 33, was married to Mary Marquardt and the pair shared two children

They were two of the biggest movie stars ever when they worked together on the Star Wars films in the 1980s, but somehow Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher managed to keep their on-set affair secret for forty years.

Shortly before Fished died suddenly at the age of 60 in 2016, she released her memoir The Princess Diarist, in which she finally revealed the tryst with her co-star, who played Han Solo in the franchise.

Speaking to People magazine a month before she passed away, Fisher described the relationship as ‘intense’ and recalled: ‘It was Han and Leia during the week, and Carrie and Harrison during the weekend.’

She revealed the couple spent their first night together after a birthday party for George Lucas, creator of the films. 

Looking back, she said: ‘I was so inexperienced, but I trusted something about him. He was kind.’ 

Although for many Star Wars fans, the couple’s love story would have been a perfect example of life imitating art as their characters of Han Solo and Princess Leia were also in love, there was one spanner in the works – at the time, Ford was married to Mary Marquardt and the couple shared two children.

Fisher’s memoir confirmed that the affair between her 19-year-old self and then 33-year-old Ford lasted for just three months. However, Ford’s marriage to Marquardt eventually broke down in 1979.

Speaking in 2017, six months after Fisher’s death, Ford finally confirmed the affair she had written about in her memoir.

When asked in an interview with People magazine about Fisher’s revelation in the book, he said: ‘It was strange. For me.’

He added Fisher had given him warning ‘to an extent’ that he was going to be featured in the book.