Peter Facinelli can save lives as Dr. Carlisle Cullen in the Twilight franchise and as Dr. Fitch Cooper in Nurse Jackie, but he couldn't save his own marriage.
Yes, in real life, Carlisle Cullen married Kelly Taylor from Beverly Hills, 90210.
Jennie Garth met Facinelli while filming the TV movie An Unfinished Affair in 1995. They married in 2001 and went on to have three daughters, but things started to turn sour for the couple after that. In 2012, Facinelli filed for divorce, which was finalized the next year.
But what happened to the happy TV movie couple?
Garth was famous for her 90210 days, but she starred in a few things here and there. When the couple started having kids, she became the stay-at-home mom while Facinelli continued his career, gaining success with Twilight. With one being left behind while the other thrived, it was bound to cause a disaster.
The Press Claimed Facinelli Cheated
When a celebrity couple suddenly announces their divorce, everyone is quick to jump to conclusions. Everyone automatically thinks one of them cheated.
The press at the time tried to claim that Facinelli was the guilty party.
The Daily Mail claimed they had a reliable source tell them that the actor had started a "torrid affair" with a younger Canadian woman while filming Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn. They also said that Garth knew about it.
Meanwhile, HollywoodLife reported that their separation had nothing to do with an affair or money, etc. They claimed they divorced because of Garth's jealousy of Facinelli's successful career.
Sources told them, "Jennie is jealous of Peter’s career and all the opportunities he got, thanks to Twilight. He is the breadwinner now, but she used to be a bigger deal."
The source went on to say that they tried to work through their problems, but it didn't work. "Peter keeps getting offers and is getting more and more successful, which bothered Jennie. She started to have to stay home more often or join him on his adventures, but would get in the way."
Apparently, Garth wanted to bring the magic back into their relationship by co-starring together again, but he didn't want to. "He felt like she was riding on his coattails. And they were already having problems, so it didn’t seem like a good idea to him."
Facinelli had previously told HollywoodLife that the couple had thought about co-starring in a TV movie he'd written that starred Garth, but he declined. "I leave the briefcase at the door," he said.
Both stories were wrong, but there was some truth in HollywoodLife's story.
The Divorce Was Just As Abrupt For Garth As It Was For The Public
Apparently, trouble did start to arise when Facinelli was cast in Twilight.
In Garth’s 2014 memoir Deep Thoughts From a Hollywood Blonde, she wrote that she noticed a change when Facinelli started getting more famous.
Garth was left as a stay-at-home mom while Facinelli went out and made a name for himself. She was proud of her husband, but it got to be too much after seeing therapists and trying to work it out after a while.
"I was thrilled for him that he was taking his career to the next level, but I was also, I can see now, feeling a bit resentful and itchy in ways that I couldn't quite identify. … All I know is that I felt like I was waiting: for him to come home, waiting for him to be free to join me in the day-to-day of our family life, waiting for the next job to be lined up that would take him far away from us again," she wrote.
Then he came home one day and asked for a divorce.
“The ground that had been cracking and shifting finally split open and pretty much swallowed me whole: Peter came home, and told me that he didn’t think he wanted to be married to me any longer, and he thought it best that we separate so that we could get a better sense of where we stood with each other," she wrote.
Still, the fact that Facinelli wanted to separate came as a shock for her. "I didn't even allow myself to entertain the idea that my husband may have reached the end of his rope, too. I understand, now, how frustrated he was at how unreachable I'd become. I was devastated by the news that he was no longer in love with me."
Garth also cites Facinelli's schedule and her personal anxieties as contributing factors to their marriage's demise.
She told Fox News that she didn't want people to think that she was pointing fingers. “I wanted to own my part in it as much as I could and still be somewhat private about a lot of it.
"I didn’t want anybody to think it was one person’s fault. It still saddens me today that it happened. Unless it’s something you wanted, divorce is not something you ever get over.”
Later, in 2017, Facinelli spoke about his divorce. He said that he needed to go through the healing process before reaching a point where they could be friends.
“Once a break up happens you need to go through the healing process first. Love is blind and hindsight is 20/20… People come into your life for a reason and relationships can change and just because we aren’t living together, doesn’t mean you can’t love each other,” he told LaPalme magazine. "I think once, there was a time where we had to learn that we had to be able to move forward with love and respect.”
After all was said and done, and the dust settled, the pair were able to continue to co-parent their children successfully and have succeeded in staying friends. It's good to hear of a celebrity divorce that didn't end in disaster.