12 Celebs That Have Cheated on Their Partners While in a Relationship

Infidelity is one of the hardest things any couple can go through, and it is even harder when the whole world is watching. There were celebrities who were alleged to have cheated, some who were caught cheating publicly, and others who admitted to cheating on their partners.

The list of celebs who have cheated is very long in Hollywood. These are 12 stars who have either been caught cheating or publicly addressed cheating on a partner.

12 Britney Spears

Britney Spears spent two decades letting people speculate about her split from Justin Timberlake. Then, her 2023 memoir The Woman in Me revealed what happened. She wrote that after a night out at a Spanish bar, she kissed choreographer Wade Robson (via Business Insider).

She described, “I was loyal to Justin for years, only had eyes for him with that one exception, which I admitted to him.” In the same book, Spears made claims that Justin Timberlake had been unfaithful to her as well, though she declined to name the woman involved.

Spears’s ex-husband Kevin Federline earlier accused her of cheating on him with a female dancer in his memoir You Thought You Knew (via PEOPLE).

11 Zayn Malik

Zayn Malik and Gigi Hadid were on and off for roughly six years and share a daughter, Khai, born in 2020. Looking back on it during an appearance on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast, Malik said he had been young and made mistakes.

He admitted that he “spoke to other females when I shouldn’t have.” He also questioned whether he was “ever truly in love” with Hadid, while making a point of saying he will always love her and respect her as the mother of his child.

10 Katharine McPhee

In 2013, photos surfaced of Katharine McPhee kissing Michael Morris, a director on her series, Smash. Both of them were married to other people at the time. McPhee was married to actor Nick Cokas.

The pair separated soon after the pictures ran. She filed for divorce in 2014, and it was finalised in 2016. She addressed the fallout with Ocean Drive magazine, saying she had “no regrets” and had learned from her choices and failures “in a really deep way” (via Page Six).

She dated her Scorpion co-star, Elyes Gabel, for two years before splitting in 2016. She is now married to David Foster.

9 David Boreanaz

The Angel and Bones star went public with his own scandal in 2010, admitting to an affair with Rachel Uchitel while married to Jaime Bergman. David Boreanaz told PEOPLE that the woman he had been involved with asked him for money. He shared, “I felt as though I was being blackmailed or there was some sort of extortion.”

He said at the time that he was “working on repairing what has been damaged so badly.” He later told TV Week that the affair ultimately made his marriage stronger (via E! News). He and Bergman are still together and have two children.

8 Gabrielle Union

Gabrielle Union has been unusually frank about the end of her first marriage to NFL player Chris Howard. On Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast in 2023, she said both she and Howard had affairs during the marriage (via LA Times).

She explained that part of it was keeping pace with what he was doing, and part of it was feeling entitled because she was the one paying the bills. She called the relationship “dysfunctional from Day One.” Union said couples therapy simply confirmed they were not compatible. She later married Dwyane Wade.

7 Meg Ryan

Meg Ryan‘s relationship with Russell Crowe, which began while they filmed Proof of Life, became one of the biggest tabloid stories of 2000. She was married to Dennis Quaid at the time. Ryan has pushed back on how it was framed.

Speaking to In Style magazine in 2008, she said her marriage had been in trouble for years and that Quaid had not been faithful to her, something she only fully learned about after the divorce (via TODAY). She further shared about Crowe, “He was definitely there at the end, but it wasn’t his fault. I was a mess. I hurt him, too, at the end.”

6 Jay-Z

Speculation about Jay-Z‘s marriage to Beyoncé had been building since the 2014 elevator incident with Solange Knowles. It later intensified with Queen Bey’s “Becky with the good hair” line on 2016’s Lemonade. He answered it himself in 2017 on the title track of 4:44, and then again in a conversation with The New York Times.

He described shutting down emotionally as a survival response, and said “infidelity” was one of the things that followed from it. The couple chose to work through it and remain married. Reports suggested that Beyoncé set a few ground rules so that their relationship could survive.

5 Jude Law

Jude Law and Sienna Miller met in 2004’s Alfie and were engaged within the year. In 2005, reports emerged that Law had been involved with Daisy Wright, the nanny to his children. Rather than deny it, Law issued a statement to the press.

He said he was “deeply ashamed and upset” that he had hurt Miller and their families, offered a public apology, and asked for privacy (via PEOPLE). The couple briefly tried to rebuild things before announcing a mutual split in 2006.

4 Hugh Grant

Hugh Grant was several years into his relationship with Elizabeth Hurley, and fresh off Four Weddings and a Funeral, when he was arrested in Los Angeles in 1995 with s*x worker Estella Marie Thompson, known as Divine Brown.

Grant did not hide behind a publicist. His statement called it “something completely insane” and said he had “hurt people I love and embarrassed people I work with” (via The Guardian). He and Hurley stayed together for another five years and remain close friends.

In the early 2010s, Hugh Grant fell in love with and dated Tinglan Hong, with whom he has two children. He is currently married to Anna Eberstein.

3 Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s affair with housekeeper Mildred Baena produced a son, Joseph, whose parentage stayed private for years. Schwarzenegger confirmed it publicly in 2011, shortly after leaving the California governor’s office.

The revelation ended his marriage to Maria Shriver, with whom he shares four children. Speaking to Men’s Journal in 2017, he said he could beat himself up about it endlessly without changing anything. He shared, “So the key thing is, how do you move forward? How do you have a great relationship with your kids?”

In his Netflix docuseries, Arnold, he shared that he wanted Baena to feel accepted. Baena earlier admitted during his appearance on the Unwaxed podcast that their father-son relationship took some time to develop.

2 Kristen Stewart

At the height of Twilight fame in 2012, Kristen Stewart was photographed kissing Rupert Sanders, who had directed her in Snow White and the Huntsman and was 19 years her senior. She was dating Robert Pattinson at the time. The backlash was enormous.

Stewart issued a rare public apology, calling it a “momentary indiscretion” that had jeopardised the most important thing in her life (via PEOPLE). She later told Marie Claire that it happened during a “really traumatic period in my early 20s.” Stewart and Pattinson’s reconciliation attempts ultimately fell short, eventually ending their relationship in 2013.

1 Kevin Hart

Kevin Hart‘s 2017 apology to his wife Eniko came with an ugly wrinkle. A compromising video recorded in Las Vegas was allegedly used by his former friend Jonathan Todd Jackson in an attempt to extort him, so Hart went public before anyone else could. Kevin Hart apologized to his family for engaging in an intimate relationship with another woman (via PEOPLE).

He revisited it in his 2019 Netflix series Kevin Hart: Don’t F**k This Up, calling it “probably the lowest moment of my life” (via PEOPLE). Eniko had an emotional reaction to the entire scandal, but chose to stay. Hart had also joked onstage about cheating on his first wife, Torrei (via PEOPLE).

Which of these scandals surprised you the most? Let us know in the comments below.