Christopher McDonald is looking back on a deeply painful chapter of his personal life. The actor revealed that he once lost his fiancée to another famous actor, an experience that left him heartbroken and deeply affected by the end of their relationship.
Christopher McDonald recalls being engaged to Geena Davis before she fell for Jeff Goldblum
As EW reports, McDonald’s fiancée, Geena Davis, fell in love with Jeff Goldblum while filming overseas. Speaking at a SAG-AFTRA Foundation event, McDonald looked back on the time, saying he was “really really devastated” by the split.
“The inside story is 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 said.
Even after having suffered a major romantic setback, McDonald continues praising his ex-fiancee. He said of Goldblum, “I don’t blame him. She’s stunningly beautiful and everything like that, but you know what happens on sets, some things happen, but I was broken.”
He explained that he was involved in a stage production of Hamlet when he discovered the affair. “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. So I got the bad news from Ed Begley,” he recalled.
Davis went on to marry Goldblum in 1987, though the couple split three years later. A year after the split, McDonald found himself cast as Davis’s husband in “Thelma & Louise”.
McDonald said that Davis was surprised by the casting, and he called her to dissipate some of the awkwardness. “Hey, you want to go to lunch?” he remembered asking. “So, we hugged it out. We had a really lovely afternoon.”
The pair even posed for wedding photos as part of the movie’s set. “Oh my god, are you kidding me?” McDonald recalled thinking. Even with a conflict-ridden history, McDonald said that they ended up just fine. “We’re dear friends now. She’s just a remarkable woman,” he noted.
Christopher McDonald is best known for playing the arrogant golfer Shooter McGavin in Happy Gilmore, one of the most iconic comedy villains of the 1990s.
Originally reported by Sreemanti Sengupta on Reality Tea
