USA TODAY 4/19/2004

Posted 4/19/2004 8:00 PM

It's a wonderful life, until the wife becomes the star

By Olivia Barker, USA TODAY

Here's a familiar Hollywood script: B-lister falls for B-lister. She jumps to the A-list. He languishes on the lower rung. They split.

The couples might officially cite something else as the reason behind the divorce, such as the ubiquitous euphemism "irreconcilable differences." But these days, it seems successful Hollywood women are impediments to successful Hollywood marriages.

Consider these recent un-couplings: Jennifer Garner became a huge somebody while her husband, Scott Foley, maintained his almost-famous status. Uma Thurman saw her star boomerang back into the spotlight while her husband, Ethan Hawke, hunkered down as a rumpled misfit. (Related chart: Is fame a Hollywood homewrecker?)

Now come Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and John Stamos. She has made the rare triumphant leap from catwalk to celluloid. He seems forever relegated to the more obscure corners of the small screen. Their union dissolved last week.

Of course, across the USA, women are making major strides in scores of industries and making some husbands feel insecure. But when it's the male Hollywood ego that feels threatened, the stress on a marriage is compounded.

Upholding your vows is easy "if you're an accountant and he's a movie star," says University of Washington sociologist Pepper Schwartz. But if he's accustomed to the klieg glow and now she's "absorbing all the wattage, well, you don't like the shadows."

Us Weekly editor Janice Min says of Hawke's breakup with Kill Bill star Thurman: "He felt she was putting her career before him. That's hard when you're used to being a star in your own right to have anyone put you second."

We're at an awkward moment as a society, says psychologist Courtney Johnson, director of research at Tickle, the online social network. "We're transitioning out of traditional gender roles, but we're still in them." Most men are still looking for women to take a more subservient role in a relationship, Johnson says.

The most successful Hollywood couples are those in which "one party is comfortable taking a backseat," Min says. Think of Julia Roberts and her cameraman husband, Danny Moder.

Still, "best supporting husband" is not a title many Hollywood men want to earn. When a star is pushed to champion his starlet wife's career while his goes neglected, "that can be really uncomfortable" if not emasculating, Johnson says.

To tip the balance back, he may start making demands on his wife, like having children. (According to Us, Stamos wanted kids; Romijn-Stamos didn't.) The thinking, Johnson says, subconscious or not, is "if you have babies, then I'm the man in the relationship, and everything's clear again."