Interracial Celebrity Couples Today and in History

Longtime Interracial Couples in Hollywood

 It’s difficult for any marriage in Hollywood to have staying power, but a number of interracial couples, including Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos, have been married for years. Ripa, who is white, met Consuelos, who is Hispanic on the soap opera “All My Children.”  Other long-lasting interracial couples in Hollywood include actor Woody Harrelson and his Asian American wife Laura Louie, Matt Damon and his Latina wife Luciana Barroso, and Thandie Newton and her white husband Ol Parker.

Celebrities Discuss Their Interracial Marriages

The rich and famous aren’t immune to the disapproval interracial couples sometimes face in the United States. Celebrities such as Chris Noth, Terrence Howard, and Tamera Mowry-Housley say they’ve all experienced criticism and outright hateful messages because they married someone from a different race.

Noth of “The Good Wife” fame says that he’s received mail warning him not to go to certain locales in the South because his wife, actress Tara Lynn Wilson, is African American.

Terrence Howard accused the Black press of lashing out at him because of his marriage to an Asian woman he later claimed was racist.

Tamera Mowry-Housley broke down in an interview on the OWN network after revealing that hateful people have referred to her as the “white man’s whore” because of her marriage to Adam Housley, a white Fox News correspondent.

Gay Celebrities in Interracial Relationships

Given that gay couples tend to enter interracial relationships more frequently than their heterosexual counterparts, it’s not surprising that a number of celebrities who identify as gay and lesbian are married to or in relationships with people who don’t share their ethnic background.

When “Good Morning America” co-host Robin Roberts came out as a lesbian in December 2013, she revealed that her girlfriend is a white massage therapist named Amber Laign.

Wanda Sykes, another famous Black lesbian, married a white woman in 2008. Comedian Mario Cantone, an Italian American, is married to a Black man, and comedian Alec Mapa, who’s Filipino, is married to a white man. Actor George Takei, a Japanese American, also has a white husband.

Famous Pioneers of Interracial Marriage

 The U.S. Supreme Court didn’t legalize interracial marriage until 1967, but a number of famous people, both in and out of Hollywood, married across cultural lines years before the high court’s landmark decision.

Black boxer Jack Johnson, for example, married three white women—all no later than 1925. He was arrested for his romances with white women and often lived abroad to avoid persecution in ​a United States where Jim Crow was still going strong.

In 1924 socialite Kip Rhinelander made headlines after marrying a mixed-race maid of Caribbean and English background. He tried to have the marriage annulled, but when that proved unsuccessful, he received a divorce from his devoted wife, Alice Jones, and agreed to pay her a monthly pension.

In 1939 and 1941, the writer Richard Wright married—both times to white women of Russian Jewish background. Like Johnson, Wright spent much of his last marriage, which lasted until his death, in Europe.

In 1947, actress and singer Lena Horne married her Jewish manager. The couple received threats and Horne faced criticism in the Black press due to her decision to marry interracially.