In her album West End Girl, Lily Allen got candid about where her open relationship with ex-husband David Harbour went wrong but she’s not the only celebrity who has talked about practicing non-monogamy.
In the celebrity world, stars from Jada Pinkett Smith to Dolly Parton have talked about having open relationships with varying results. While some might swear by it, others have said it didn’t work for them but they’ve all, in one way or another, worked to break the stigma around it.
Open relationships, ethical non-monogamy and polyamory all have different meanings and different parameters depending on who you ask. Keep in mind, there are a bunch of different types of non-monogamous relationships out there, but the two most well-known are simply known as a “polyamorous relationship” and an “open relationship.”
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Open relationships are about exploring all kinds of different connections with people, whether it be romantic, sexual, or otherwise, per Live Bold & Bloom. And polyamory is more often about exploring multiple romantic or sexual relationships, depending on your arrangements.
And before we continue, let’s talk about a huge misconception. Polyamory and open relationships are not the same as cheating. These arrangements between multiple people are all consensual and all about communication.
Now that we got that out of the way, let’s talk about the A-listers who’ve opened up about these relationships.
While there have been more high-profile open relationships like with Elliot Page, Kate Mara and Max Minghella, many celebrities have chosen to keep their multiple partners away from the public eye (but will divulge some details about the arrangements)!
Check out which celebrities have been in open and/or polyamorous relationships over the years below:
A version of this article was originally published on June 2023.
Lily Allen & David Harbour
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In her 2025 album, West End Girl, Lily Allen sang about the downfall of her marriage to David Harbour, hinting that the actor broke the rules of their “open” relationship.
Across the album, Allen calls her partner a “sex addict” who led a “double life” and “went astray” from their relationship. “‘Why aren’t we f—ing, baby?’ Yeah, that’s what you said,” she sings in “Sleepwalking.” “But you let me think it was me in my head, and nothing to do with them girls in your bed.”
In “Madeline,” Allen sings about having an “arrangement” with the Stranger Things actor and discusses the rules they laid out: “Be discreet and don’t be blatant. There had to be payment. It had to be with strangers.”
She hints that her partner took things too far, singing, “Is it just sex or is there emotion?”
Elliot Page
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In his 2023 memoir, Elliot Page revealed that he was once a third partner in actress Kate Mara’s relationship with Max Minghella.
Page revealed that they had a brief romance, that Minghella was fully aware of, while 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, prior to Page’s 2020 transition.
“I think my relationship, or whatever you want to call it with Kate, very much encapsulates a certain dynamic that I consistently found myself in, which was falling for people that — I think a lot of us do this — who aren’t fully available,” he wrote.
Kate Mara & Max Minghella
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Though neither Mara nor Minghella have ever addressed Page’s memoir, they were reportedly onboard with Page revealing their open relationship.
In the book, Page claims that Mara said: “I never thought I could be in love with two people and now I know I can.’”
Mara and Minghella’s four year romance fizzled out shortly after Page and Mara’s fling ended.
Drew Barrymore & Luke Wilson
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Remember when Drew Barrymore and Luke Wilson dated from 1997 to 1999? Well, turns out that they had an open relationship. She said on her show, The Drew Barrymore Show, “When we first met, we were young and wild. I was dating [Luke], but I think he was also dating other people. Yeah, totally, it was an open relationship, we were young.”
Dolly Parton
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Dolly Parton explained in her new documentary for Channel 5 entitled Dolly Parton: In Her Own Words, per DailyMail, that he and her husband of over 50 years Carl Dean have an “open” relationship, but not in the way you may think.
“Short, fat, bald or skinny — I’ve had crushes on some very unusual men,” she said, elaborating on why she calls men her “weakness.” She added, “Carl knows I’ll always come home and I’m not having sex with these people — I’m just flirting and having fun.”
So their open relationship isn’t sexual, unlike many other open relationships we’ve seen in Tinseltown. Parton ended by saying, “Yes, it’s an open relationship, but not sexually and I would kill him if I thought he was doing that. He would shoot me too. At the end of the day we love each other madly.”
Shirley MacLaine
Image Credit: Photo By: Elizabeth Goodenough.
Shirley MacLaine was married to Steve Parker from 1954 to 1982, and she credits their non-monogamous way of doing things with the relationships being as good as it was.
“I guess you would say ‘practiced an open marriage’ in 1954, which was another lifetime,” MacLaine told People in 2016. “No one understood it, we did. He lived in Japan basically, I lived in America working, and this and that. We’d meet up, always great friends, traveled sometimes together.”
“I think that’s the basis for a long-lasting marriage, if you really want to do such a thing,” she added. “I would say better to stay friends and we don’t have enough time to talk about the sexuality of all. I was very open about all of that and so was he.”
David & Angie Bowie
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Before David Bowie married Iman, he was married to model Angie Bowie nee Barnett, from 1970 to 1980. After their divorce, she was ordered to be a 10-year gag, unable to speak about their romance. However, once 1990 hit, she revealed they had an open marriage, and it was solely based on convenience, saying to the Evening Standard, “We got married so that I could work [to get a permit]. I didn’t think it would last and David said, before we got married, ‘I’m not really in love with you’ and I thought that’s probably a good thing.”
Frankie Grande
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Ariana Grande’s brother Frankie Grande revealed that he was in a relationship with two men who were married to each other. “I was very open to the possibilities of what does love look like? What could love be? It just happened. It is an ethical and committed non-monogamy. Everyone knows what’s going on,” he said to Access Hollywood.
Charlie Sheen
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Charlie Sheen made headlines back in 2011 when he revealed that he was living with two 24-year-old girlfriends that he dubbed the “goddesses,” Natalie Kenly, a graphic designer and Rachel Oberlin, an adult film star.
“You’ve read about the goddesses, come on. They’re an international sensation. These are my girlfriends. These are the women that I love that have completed the three parts of my heart,” Sheen said in an interview with ABC News.
“It seems crazy to everybody else, but for us it works,” Kenly said in the same interview. The throuple seemed to have split by the end of 2011.
DeRay Davis
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In a 2017 appearance on The Real, comedian DeRay Davis discussed his throuple relationship, revealing he had been with one of his girlfriends for five years and another for two and a half.
“They’re very comfortable, because I’m very open. I don’t make it where it’s all, ‘Oooh, look what I’m doing!’ I’m not a player,” DeRay said.
He and girlfriends Coco Crawford and Caro Peguero also appeared together on his 2016 Oxygen show “Living with Funny.”
Georges LeBar & RuPaul
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Georges LeBar and RuPaul have been in an open marriage for years now. Per Ok Magazine, RuPaul said, “It’s just realistic. There’s no such thing as monogamy with men.”
Shailene Woodley
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One person you may be shocked to find on this list is Divergent star Shailene Woodley. In an April 2020 interview with the New York Times, she talked openly about her private experiences of being in an open relationship. “Listen, I’m someone who has experienced both an open relationship and a deeply monogamous relationship in my life, and I think we’re in a day and age where there should be no rules except for the ones designed by two people in a partnership — or three people, whatever floats your boat,” she said.
She added, “But there has to be a level of responsibility in any relationship dynamic, and that responsibility is simply honesty and communication and trust. Apart from that, it’s really none of our business what people choose to do with their lives.”
Bella Thorne
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Bella Thorne’s only high-profile, open relationship in the past was with Tana Mongeau and Mod Sun. While the former Disney Channel star received a lot of backlash for this, she defended her dating choices and even called it “fun.”
“If it works, you can spend a weekend with two people and you’re all hanging out and having fun and smoking, and like, sharing stories up late at night,” she said in a 2019 interview with Cosmopolitan. “It’s a really fun experience and I have been able to capture that a couple times, and I just love that idea. I love loving two people at once.”
Tana Mongeau
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YouTube star Tana Mongeau’s most high-profile polyamorous relationship was with Bella Thorne and Mod Sun. She talked about her relationship in a YouTube video, saying that she was originally in a relationship with Thorne, and then their relationship grew to a throuple with the three of them. She revealed that it made her learn a lot about herself, “Being in that relationship taught me so much about myself and polyamory and openness and how close-minded the world can be — and how open-minded the world can be.”
She was in another open relationship with Jake Paul.
Mod Sun
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As we said, Mod Sun was in a polyamorous relationship with Tana Mongeau and Bella Thorne. While he hasn’t spoken openly about the throuple, he did talk about his monogamous relationship with Thorne after he and Mongeau broke it off.
Mo’Nique
Image Credit: Photo By: Elizabeth Goodenough/Everett Collection.
Oscar-winning actress Mo’Nique has also been up front about her marriage to husband Sidney Hicks. In an August 2007 profile, the Precious actress told the New York Times that she and Hicks “have an agreement that we’ll always be honest, and if sex happens with another person, that’s not a deal breaker for us, that’s not something where we’ll have to say, ‘Oh God, we’ve got to go to divorce court because you cheated on me.’ Because we don’t cheat.”
The actress further reiterated her stance during an appearance on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show. “When I said I had an open marriage, people automatically jumped to sex. They automatically went there,” she said. “But I’ve been best friends with my husband since we were 14 years old. When we say open, we’re very honest. There are no secrets. Oftentimes you have people that are married, but they’re strangers, and we refuse to be those people.”
Willow Smith
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Along with her parents, Willow Smith opened up about her preference for polyamory back in 2019 for Red Table Talk, per Elite Daily. She said, “I love men and women equally, and so I would definitely want one man, one woman. I feel like I could be polyfidelitous with those two people. I’m not the kind of person that is constantly looking for new sexual experiences.”
Will Smith & Jada Pinkett Smith
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Probably one of the most well-known couples who have dabbled in an open relationship is Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith. Along with talking about it on Red Table Talk with her daughter Willow, Jada talked about their open agreement during a 2013 interview with HuffPost Live. “I’ve always told Will, ‘You can do whatever you want as long as you can look at yourself in the mirror and be OK,’ because at the end of the day, Will is his own man,” she said. “I’m here as his partner, but he is his own man. He has to decide who he wants to be and that’s not for me to do for him. Or vice versa.”
Will spoke about it nearly a decade before in 2005 to DailyMail, saying, “You’re going to be attracted to people. In our marriage vows, we didn’t say ‘forsaking all others.’… If it came down to it, then one can say to the other, ‘Look, I need to have sex with somebody. I’m not going to if you don’t approve of it — but please approve of it.’”
Baron Vaughn
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Grace & Frankie star Baron Vaughn has previously spoken about non-monogamous relationships. Back in 2017, he spoke to Reality Bytes about how there are so many kinds and how you should communicate through it all.
He said, “It can be daunting, it depends what you want out of it. And also what style you do, because there are many styles. There’ve been a couple times where I’ve been in a triad, which is essentially an equilateral ‘throuple,’ some people might call it, where everyone was in a relationship with everyone else.”
Nico Tortorella
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Probably the most well-known celebrity who’s open about their experiences with polyamory is Nico Tortorella. Tortoella and their partner Bethany C. Meyers have been in a polyamorous relationship, and have spoken openly about it over the years. They explained to Out about their setup, saying, “I am kind of a serial monogamist in my polyamory. ‘ve explained this term before, but it’s a lot of fancy words jumbled together for, I love dating one person at a time. I’m married, yes, but I love dating one person at a time. I have a partner in LA that I’ve had for a long time, but I’m not his only partner; he’s not my only partner.
Neil Gaiman
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Neil Gaiman and his ex-wife Amanda Palmer were in an open marriage for years. Towards the beginning of their marriage, they kept things open, but per DailyMail, Palmer ended the non-monogamy when their son turned four. They divorced in 2022.
Ezra Miller
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Ezra Miller revealed in a 2018 interview with Playboy Magazine, via Teen Vogue, that they were practicing nonmonogamy with a close cirlce of friends who they referred to as a “polycule” — a term that combines “polyamorous” and “molecule.”
“I’m trying to find queer beings who understand me as a queer being off the bat, who I make almost a familial connection with, and I feel like I’m married to them 25 lifetimes ago from the moment we meet,” he said. “And then they are in the squad — the polycule. And I know they’re going to love everyone else in the polycule because we’re in the polycule, and we love each other so much.”
YUNGBLUD
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In a previous, now archived interview with Attitude Magazine, YUNGBLUD talked about learning he was polyamorous. “I probably would say now, I am polyamorous. Before I didn’t f***ing know what I was. I was meeting people and learning… by meeting them and talking about sexuality and gender, I [was] going, ‘Oh my f***ing God, maybe I’m this, if I’m going to be f***ing close to anything on the spectrum.’”
Thomas Middleditch
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Silicon Valley star Thomas Middleditch didn’t know that he wanted to be polygamous until after he married his wife Mollie Gates in 2015, he told Playboy years later. He then goes on to explain that his wife was willing to work with him, but that they’ve maintained a dynamic of push and pull, where he always wants more openness and she always wants less. As of 2020, Gates has filed for divorce.
“I don’t know how much I can say, because I don’t want my wife to be mad at me,” Middleditch said in Sept. 2019. “Only after I got married was I like, ‘Mollie, I’m sorry, but we have to get nontraditional here.’ To her credit, instead of saying ‘Fuck you, I’m out,’ she was like, ‘Let’s figure this out.’ To be honest, swinging has saved our marriage. We have different speeds, and we argue over it constantly, but it’s better than feeling unheard and alone and that you have to scurry in the shadows.”
“Myself and a lot of other people who start on this journey don’t know where they’re at in it,” he added. “They’re going, ‘I think I just need a thing to happen. All I know is, this particular situation is hard.’ I love my wife like I’ve never loved anyone before. With two people who feel that way about each other, how do you go down that road? It’s tough. Bring a therapist along for the ride.”
YG & Kehlani
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YG and Kehlani dated for around a year back in 2019, and Kehlani later told The Breakfast Club that they broke up over YG not sticking to the boundaries of their open relationship.
“I did give the space for communication in it to be open,” she said. “It wasn’t kind of honored, which kind of made it worse when you’re like, ‘Hey I low-key I am saying any, you know sh-t can go down um as long as everything [is] communicated and everyone’s adults.’”
Margaret Cho
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Did you know that Margaret Cho was in an open marriage for 11 years with artist Al Ridenour? “I’m married to a man, but I’m bisexual, so I like both. … We got together because … we both have this [idea of], ‘I just don’t want to have sex with the same person my whole life. That’s gross,’” she said to The Real in 2013.
William Daniels & Bonnie Bartlett
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William Daniels and Bonnie Bartlett had some type of open marriage, with she detailed in her memoir, saying at one point, she “could no longer tolerate any kind of open marriage.”
“The marriage could have broken apart at any time those first 10 years, if one of us had, say, fallen in love with somebody, but we never did,” she said, per People. “That was never part of it. Both of us really wanted to be together. The love has never stopped.”