Movers & Shakers: The Couples That Matter

Sting & Trudie Styler

Sting does write and play the music, but just about everything else we know him for--eco-zealotry, landed gentrydom, Tantric yoga, organic farming, fatherhood, mega-fundraising, etc.--can be credited to his wife of many years, Trudie Styler. Styler will always be Mrs. Sting, and yet her tireless good cheer has allowed her to pursue her own interests (producing documentaries and films) while orchestrating a whirlwind of activity in four major homes, including the 400-year-old castle-like estate in England, from which Sting has clearly drawn the focus, inspiration and whatever else has been required for him to generate music so productively over the last two decades.

Gale Anne Hurd & Jonathan Hensleigh

With her background as the producer of the original Terminator and Alien (plus lots of other high-octane flicks thereafter), and his as a writer and producer of Armageddon, to name just one of his testosterone epics, the union of Gale Anne Hurd and Jonathan Hensleigh cannot be described as a marriage of opposites. (Hurd's previous husbands were James Cameron and Brian De Palma--she's consistent). Though this summer's The Punisher, which she produced and he wrote and directed, did not make as big a splash as their previous movies, between the two of them there's not a lot about big-budget action pictures they don't know. They apparently bring to each other a common understanding of and mutual tolerance for hard-charging Hollywood workaholism, which can be great glue in a town like this one.

Anjelica Huston & Robert Graham

Even if they were not individually talented, successful, winning, intelligent and photogenic, Oscar-winning actress Huston and sculptor Graham would be an irresistible couple for the worlds they bring together as a package. Her Hollywood dynastic as well as personal identity (she's known as one of the best poker players in town, too) plus his stature in the art world makes for intense prestige, not to mention a doubly large assembly of art and entertainment powers to donate to whatever cause honors them, as many do. Whether it's the Museum of Contemporary Art, a political fundraiser (they supported Arianna Huffington for governor), an anti-war rally, a Project Angel Food affair or a Saks Fifth Avenue charity event, they add classy glamour. No couple running on accomplishment, social grace and bone structure without the benefit of youth looks as stunning standing together in the limelight as this one.

Julianne Moore & Bart Freundlich

Moore had already become a star off her Oscar-nominated performance in Boogie Nights when she began work on the indie The Myth of Fingerprints and fell in love with its director and writer, Bart Freundlich. Her career is the booming one at the moment, even with time off for their two children, but he obviously gives her grounding from which she's come up with great performances in the midst of fast life change. They married last year and live in Greenwich Village, where her extraordinary eye (e.g., remarkable Mid-Century furniture and photography collections) has created a home worthy of glossy magazine coverage. The two are effortlessly stylish in a world of studied sophistication, and if Bart leans more toward hoops and golf, his brother, Oliver, adds to the Freundlich side of the equation by being the architect who designed their old, and new, apartments.

Sarah Jessica Parker & Matthew Broderick

Neither has conventional star looks, and both have uniquely attractive brands of congeniality that make us think that Ferris Bueller could have grown up and married Carrie Bradshaw. It even makes sense that they'd have their first child in the midst of mutual mega-success--she with Sex and the City and he with The Producers. As a public couple in the New York limelight--which extends the whole way to the Hamptons on summer weekends--they have great chemistry. Her stylishness lends him the cool he had lost before meeting her, and his un-trendy, dependable professionalism melds well with her hardworking commitment to showbiz. They stand to help each other age well, which can be a magic ingredient in Hollywood unions.

Frank Marshall & Kathleen Kennedy

He's the renaissance man who has done everything from direct films (Arachnophobia), produce them (The Bourne Identity) and serve as vice president and co-chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee. She is Steven Spielberg's trusted producing collaborator who is now readying War of the Words with Tom Cruise. Aside from their separate ventures, Marshall and Kennedy often work together, as they did producing Seabiscuit and the upcoming Jurassic Park IV. They have been such an enduring couple that before Lucy Fisher partnered with husband Doug Wick, Fisher called Kennedy concerned that their careers would bleed into their personal lives. Kennedy said it was the opposite, that family merges into the work life, and her own life was the proof.

Baz Luhrmann & Catherine Martin

They met while she was a student at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney, where she designed his production of Lake Lost for the Australian Opera, and became a couple destined to co-author increasingly outlandish, visually daring films--_Strictly Ballroom_, then William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, and then Moulin Rouge, as well as their recent re-staging of La Bohème. Their company Bazmark is an enterprise bent on altered, enhanced or surreality made possible by their mutual talents and shared carnival approach to life. Both are dreamers, both are talkers, both are doers. It's a lot for a single marriage to house, but the old cliché applies here--they seem to bring out the best in each other. Stated differently, it's as if there are two artists and two muses packed into two partners. Their most recent creation was a daughter, Lillian.

Tim Robbins & Susan Sarandon

Ever since they fell in love while starring together in Bull Durham, Robbins and Sarandon have seemed to flourish as a couple, as parents, and as professionals working together and separately. That she won an Oscar when he directed her in Dead Man Walking had to have had a salutary effect on their relationship, but their shared worldview--the high-profile liberal activisim, etc.--seems the more fundamental glue.

Brian Grazer & Gigi Levangie Grazer

His spiky-haired, surfer-boy exuberance and ability to tap into the cultural Zeitgeist with partner Ron Howard at Imagine Entertainment are grounded in a Malibu sort of way by his fashion-savvy, stunning redhead, screenwriter/novelist wife, Gigi, whose potboiler romances are distinguished by a spot-on dissection of the Hollywood social set and an understanding of how the Industry works. They are a strikingly visual couple with strikingly individual identities and strikingly successful projects.

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