HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Ryan Phillippe is opening up about his divorce from Reese Witherspoon after seven years of marriage, calling the experience “the darkest, saddest place I had ever been.”
Phillippe met Witherspoon in 1997 when he attended a party for her 21st birthday. The couple quickly fell for each other, getting married on June 5, 1999 in a small South Carolina ceremony on a plantation. But after seven years of marriage, which included two children together, 8-year-old Ava and 4-year-old Deacon, the couple decided to go their separate ways.
“There were a good four or five months of not being able to get out of bed,” Phillippe reveals to W magazine. “It was the worst time in my life.”
“You get through it,” Phillippe continued. “It’s a process that’s not easy, but I get less and less sad about it every day.”
The 33-year-old actor says the cause of the break-up was “far more complicated and far less interesting than it’s made out to be.” But he says he can realize the public’s fascination with wanting to know what went wrong in a Hollywood marriage that appeared sound from afar.
“I certainly understand the level of interest that comes along with a public marriage, and with being married to someone like Reese, who so many people love with good reason. People want answers,” Phillippe says. “But I think sometimes they wouldn’t be happy with what the answers would be.”
Phillippe is quick to shoot down the rumors that Australian actress Abbie Cornish was a possible reason behind the end of his marriage.
“It was unfair for her to be called the names that she was, because it wasn’t about that,” he says. “I don’t think an outside person can ever cause a divorce. I had difficulties in my relationship, and in my marriage, long before I ever met her.”
The Delaware native admits that the end of his marriage caused him to slow down professionally. His upcoming film “Stop-Loss,” a drama about Iraq war soldiers in which Cornish is a co-star, will be just his second appearance on the big screen in the last two years.
“I’ve had a lot of upheaval in my personal life,” he says. “I wanted to take time to make sure that my kids were okay and to build a new life that was going to be suitable to being a single parent.
“Every once in a while you kind of want to take a step back and refocus to make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons.”
