Actor Christopher McDonald was “devastated” after two-time Oscar winner Geena Davis left him for Jeff Goldblum.
McDonald, 71, recalled his heartbreak at a career retrospective at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation. The actor, who has received two Emmy nominations for his role on the HBO Max comedy Hacks, and Davis met in the early 1980s, following Davis’ first marriage, and later became engaged. McDonald said another, bigger movie star caught Davis’ eye, which ended their relationship.
“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.
Davis and Goldblum starred in 1985’s Transylvania 6-5000, before marrying in 1987. McDonald added that he has no hard feelings for Goldblum, now 73. “I don’t blame him. She’s stunningly beautiful and everything like that, but you know, what happens on sets—things sometimes happen,” he said, “But I was broken.”
To add insult to injury, McDonald was planning to join Davis overseas in a matter of weeks.
“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,” he recalled. Ed Begley, Jr., who co-starred in Transylvania 6-5000 with Goldblum and Davis, told McDonald the pair were starting something. “So I got the bad news from Ed Begley. He did me that solid.” He added, “I mean I was really, really devastated.” Davis and Goldblum married in 1987.
They went on to star together in 1986’s The Fly and 1988’s Earth Girls Are Easy before they divorced in 1990. The following year, Thelma and Louise was released, in which McDonald reunited with Davis to play her controlling husband, Darryl Dickinson, in the Ridley Scott-directed drama.
“It’s literally five years later and [Davis] said to [Director Ridley Scott], ‘Who’d you get to play my husband?’” McDonald recalled, “And he said, ‘Oh, you’ll love him, he’s tall, he’s funny, uh...what’s his name? Chris McDonald.’ And then she said, ‘I used to go with him,’ and he said, ‘Even better, perfect!’”
McDonald told the L.A. Times in 1992 that working with Davis at the time was “really cathartic.”
In 1993, the actress married Finnish filmmaker Renny Harlin, before they divorced in 1998. She met her longtime partner, plastic surgeon Reza Jarrahy, in 2001, and they have three children together. They parted ways in 2021.
McDonald has been married to actress Lupe Gidley since 1992, and they have four children together.
