Mary Steenburgen’s A-List Marriages: From Malcolm McDowell to 30 Years of Wedded Bliss With Ted Danson
Steenburgen and Danson are adorable in 'A Man on the Inside,' but did you know she was previously married to another costar?
Mary Steenburgen and Ted Danson have long been one of our favorite celebrity couples, and with the actress now costarring in season 2 of her husband’s Netflix comedy series A Man on the Inside, the pair has a fun new spotlight.
Steenburgen and Danson have been married for 30 years, and given the fact that they’ve been an A-list duo for decades, it’s easy to forget that they were both previously married before finding lasting love. Prior to marrying Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen was married to another costar, Malcolm McDowell, for 10 years, and their son, Charlie McDowell, married another child of celebrities, Lily Collins. Read on to learn all about Steenburgen’s two high-profile marriages.
Mary Steenburgen and Malcolm McDowell: From costars to Lily Collins’ in-laws
Mary Steenburgen met her first husband, British actor Malcolm McDowell, best known for his harrowing performance in A Clockwork Orange, when they played love interests in the 1979 sci-fi film Time After Time. They married in 1980 and had a daughter, Lilly, an actress turned interior designer, in 1981, and a son, Charlie, now a director, in 1983. Charlie McDowell married Emily in Paris star Lily Collins, the daughter of musician Phil Collins and Jill Tavelman, in 2021, making for quite the famous family tree!
Steenburgen and McDowell divorced after a decade of marriage in 1990. While they’re no longer together, they’ll soon be sharing the screen in the new Western Last Train to Fortune. The film marks their first time costarring since they were in the 1983 historical drama Cross Creek.
Steenburgen has remained friendly with her ex-husband and still has kind words to share about him, saying, “He’s a very special, wonderful, bigger-than-life magical being, and we’re so lucky that we managed to remember we loved each other. I just thought, ‘This is my children’s daddy, there’s no way I can hate him.’”
Mary Steenburgen and Ted Danson: A power couple for 30 years and counting
Mary Steenburgen met her current husband, Cheers star Ted Danson, when they costarred as husband and wife in the 1994 film Pontiac Moon. Life imitated art, and they married the next year. The actress became stepmother to Danson’s two daughters from his previous marriage to environmental activist Casey Coates.
Steenburgen and Danson recently celebrated their 30th anniversary, and throughout their long marriage, they’ve acted together a number of times, in the miniseries Gulliver’s Travels (1996) and Living With the Dead (2002), the short-lived sitcom Ink (1996 to 1997) and the TV movie It Must Be Love (2004). They also hilariously played themselves in a number of episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, but while they divorced on a 2017 episode of the show, leading some viewers to think they’d actually broken up, they stayed a happy couple in real life.
Currently, Steenburgen and Danson can be seen in A Man on the Inside, in which Danson stars as a private investigator and Steenburgen, a new addition to the season 2 cast, plays a music teacher who steals his heart—but who also might be a suspect in the case he’s pursuing.
The two stars have always spoken adoringly of one another, and Steenburgen recently told People that Danson is equally lovable in his personal and professional life, saying, “There is a reason that Ted is treasured by everyone who works with him . . . Ted sets the tone. He’s just so loving and takes such joy in acting that all of us who are hard at work away from our families for long hours get to work on a set that is dictated by his kindness. And as his wife, watching the respect and love that crews have for Ted has always made me very proud of him. I also fell in love with the sort of father that he is and with his beloved daughters . . . Ted loves them with all his heart and yet had space in there to love my Lilly and Charlie so perfectly as well. It’s pretty thrilling to go through life with Ted Danson.”
Steenburgen and Danson have a truly charming marriage, and their genuine chemistry comes through both on and off the screen.
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