Christopher McDonald has opened up about the heartbreak he felt when his fiancée Geena Davis left him to be with Jeff Goldblum.
During a recent career retrospective for the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, McDonald spoke about the end of his engagement to Davis in the mid-1980s.
“Geena Davis and I were engaged to be married for about five weeks and she fell in love with Jeff Goldblum doing her first movie over there in Europe,” McDonald shared. Davis and Goldblum were filming Transylvania 6-5000 at the time.
“And I don’t blame him,” McDonald continued. “She’s stunningly beautiful and everything like that, but you know, what happens on sets — things sometimes happen.
“But I was broken,” he continued.
open image in gallery“I was doing Hamlet at the time, playing Laertes, and I had another three weeks to finish and then I was going to go over and join her,” McDonald said. “So I got the bad news from Ed Begley. He did me that solid.
“I mean I was really, really devastated.”
Davis and Goldblum went on to marry in 1987 before filing for divorce in 1990, citing irreconcilable differences.
McDonald and Davis then reconnected while working on the 1991 film Thelma & Louise.
He recalled: “It’s literally five years later and [Davis] said to [Director Ridley Scott], ‘Who’d you get to play my husband?’ and he said, ‘Oh, you’ll love him, he’s tall, he’s funny, uh …. what’s his name? Chris McDonald,’ and then she said, ‘I used to go with him,’ and he said, ‘Even better, perfect!’”
McDonald said he and Davis met for lunch and “hugged it out.”
open image in gallery“We had a really lovely afternoon and then we did what I think is probably the most ironic thing in the world: Let’s do wedding pictures and put them around the house for the set decorators,” he said. “We did all that, it turned out great and we’re dear friends now.”
For her part, Davis wrote about the overlap in the relationships in her 2022 memoir Dying of Politeness.
“When I left for the movie, I was living with-and engaged to—one of the most wonderful men I’ve ever known, the actor Christopher McDonald. He was and is a truly beautiful person,” she wrote. “And I broke his heart to be with Jeff, I’m ashamed to say. He didn’t deserve that at all, and this dear man eventually forgave me, for which I will always be grateful.”
McDonald went on to marry Lupe Gidley in 1992. They share four children.
After divorcing Goldblum, Davis went on to marry Renny Harlin from 1993 to 1998 and plastic surgeon Reza Jarrahy from 2001 to 2021. She shares three children with Jarrahy.
Goldblum married Emilie Livingston in 2014. They share two children.