Olivia Wilde Was Once Told She Became a Better Actor After Divorcing Her Ex-Husband
Actor Olivia Wilde was once able to find a silver lining in her earliest divorce. Although it was a trying time for the superstar, Wilde felt that her talents greatly benefited from her break up.
Olivia Wilde’s first husband was an Italian prince
Before her well-known relationship and divorce from Saturday Night Live alum Jason Sudeikis, Wilde was in a deep marriage with filmmaker Tao Ruspoli. Ruspoli couldn’t have come into the actor’s life at a more perfect time, since Wilde had grown frustrated with the dating scene by then.
A friend of Wilde’s parents suggested Ruspoli to the star, but initially she was put off by the description of her future husband.
“He wanted to introduce me to this Italian guy who made films and lived on a school bus. I said, ‘Whoa! I don’t want to meet a dude who lives on a bus,'” she once told Women’s Health.
Eventually, Wilde decided to give Ruspoli a chance, finding out that the suitor was also a prince in the process. Wilde and Ruspoli hit it off well enough to elope, but the age difference between them worried Wilde’s parents.
“My dad did have a minor heart attack, and it was hard to imagine settling down at the time,” she recalled. “But there was this wave of romantic excitement and an overwhelming sense that we were supposed to be family. We were very open to the idea that if it didn’t work, we would let it go its course. No pressure.”
Olivia Wilde was told she became a better actor after divorcing Tao Ruspoli
Wilde and Ruspoli’s marriage wouldn’t last long, and the two ended up divorcing in 2011. The actor asserted that she and her ex just drifted apart over time, although she felt she did her best to make the marriage work.
“I felt I had something to prove. If you fall off a horse, you get back up. I am not a quitter. I hung on for as long as possible until it was more hurtful to stay,” Wilde once said in an interview with Marie Claire.
However, Wilde also felt that the divorce might have been a blessing in disguise. She credited the separation for leading her towards her second husband in Sudeikis. Wilde also discovered the break up led to some unexpected benefits towards her acting.
“It makes you a more empathetic person, and I think it’s made me a better actress. Weakness is something we don’t like to admit we have. We hold it against people, until we experience it, and then we feel more compassion for it,” Wilde added.
The creator of House, the popular medical drama she featured on, noticed this change in her skill as well.
“David Shore, who created House, said, ‘You should get divorced every year; your acting’s never been better,'” she recalled.
Jason Sudeikis wasn’t sure why he and Olivia Wilde divorced
As many know, Sudeikis and Wilde’s divorce has caught much attention ever since the latter was spotted being intimate with Harry Styles. When asked for clarity over their split, Sudeikis confessed he understood as little as everyone else did.
“I’ll have a better understanding of why in a year, and an even better one in two, and an even greater one in five, and it’ll go from being, you know, a book of my life to becoming a chapter to a paragraph to a line to a word to a doodle,” Sudeikis told GQ.
However, Sudeikis saw the divorce as an opportunity to learn more about himself and relationships.
“That’s an experience that you either learn from or make excuses about,” he said. “You take some responsibility for it, hold yourself accountable for what you do, but then also endeavor to learn something beyond the obvious from it.”
