“Never marry a man you wouldn’t want to be divorced from,” Nora Ephron once wrote, and while many people still don’t heed that wise advise, it’s always a pleasure to see divorced or otherwise split-up couples commit to the project of co-parenting their children peacefully. As the kid of amicably divorced parents myself, I can personally attest that having the people who raised you get along takes a lot of the sting out of suddenly having to navigate two homes—and I have to imagine that’s also true for celebrity children. (That said, I guess they’re mostly used to having multiple homes…but still, you get the point.)
To that end, we’ve rounded up some celebrity parents who appear to be doing a great job of raising their kids as a team, despite no longer being together.
Sienna Miller and Tom Sturridge
While Miller’s 2005 split from Jude Law turned into a tabloid bonanza, the fallout from her four-year relationship with Tom Sturridge, the father of her 11-year-old daughter, Marlowe, was far friendlier. “We do bedtime every day,” the actress told Allure in 2017. “We felt like as much togetherness as possible would be ideal, and fortunately we really love each other and are best friends, and so that works.” Though Miller has since moved from New York back to London with her current boyfriend, the actor Oli Green, she and Sturridge (who is now dating Alexa Chung) remain close.
Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin
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Though the Goop founder and Coldplay singer consciously uncoupled back in 2014, they were all smiles at their daughter Apple’s high school graduation in June of 2022. (The pair also share custody of their 16-year-old son, Moses.) “We just didn’t quite fit together,” Paltrow wrote last year of her marriage to Martin. “There was always a bit of unease and unrest. But man, did we love our children.” Paltrow also seems to love Martin’s current partner, Dakota Johnson, with whom she was seen holding hands at a recent event.
Linda Evangelista and François-Henri Pinault
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Evangelista recently told Vogue about co-parenting her teenage son, Augie, with his father, French businessman François-Henri Pinault, and Salma Hayek, Pinault’s wife since 2009. The supermodel described Hayek’s insistence on cooking Thanksgiving dinner for her when Evangelista was sick, saying: “I wanted her Mexican chicken with truffled potatoes. And she spent the day in the kitchen and cooked it herself. No help. The kids helped her at the end. She made a feast—a beautiful, beautiful meal.” Sweet!
Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan
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Despite their ugly and public divorce in 2000, Quaid called his relationship with Ryan “friendly” on a 2018 appearance on Watch What Happens Live. “Obviously, we did a really good job co-parenting, because look at the result,” he added, referring to their actor son Jack.
Amy Poehler and Will Arnett
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This funny couple broke up in 2016, but they’re still a united front when it comes to their two sons, Archie and Abel. Poehler discussed the occasional difficulties of co-parenting in her 2014 memoir Yes Please, writing: “Imagine spreading everything you care about on a blanket and then tossing the whole thing up in the air. The process of divorce is about loading that blanket, throwing it up, watching it all spin, and worrying what stuff will break when it lands.”
Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon
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“I think Nick and I have done pretty well in co-parenting, staying friends with each other so that we can talk,” Carey told People in 2019. The former spouses share 12-year-old twins Moroccan and Monroe.
Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck
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There doesn’t appear to be any bad blood between exes Garner and Affleck, even since the latter actor married Jennifer Lopez in 2022; Garner and Affleck share custody of their three children, just as Lopez shares custody of her twins with Marc Antony. Last year, Lopez told Vogue that Garner is “an amazing co-parent” to their brood, and that she and Affleck “work really well together.”
