Back in the day, Greta Scacchi was a big deal. She was with Vincent D’Onofrio for years and they have a daughter, Leila (who married Sean Penn). She had an affair with Daniel Day Lewis. She was once an in-demand actress and considered to be one of the most beautiful women of her generation. I was truly today years old when I learned about her second marriage though. In the 1990s, Greta settled down and got married for a second time. Her husband was… her first cousin. Apparently, their relationship and marriage tore the family apart (I mean…). They even had a child together!! Well, it looks like they quietly split up years ago and simply never told anyone? From Eden Confidential:
When Greta Scacchi started dating her first cousin, it caused a rift in the family with her Italian father ‘devastated’ at his daughter going into a relationship with his sister’s son. But despite that, she still settled down with Carlo Mantegazza and in 1997 they even had a child, Matteo.
The status of their relationship has remained a closely guarded secret primarily owing to the notoriously private White Mischief star never discussing her personal life. In fact, it was recently suggested that they were still together and even that they were married.
However, I can reveal that the actress and the man she once called her ‘rock’ actually split up over a decade ago. ‘They separated 12 years ago,’ her representative tells me. And a source close to the star confirms the break-up, but was keen to stress it was all very amicable.
‘They simply grew apart as couples often do, but there’s no animosity between them whatsoever. They obviously have a son together and wish each other well. It just wasn’t meant to be.’
The source added: ‘Greta’s privacy is very important to her and she’s never been comfortable discussing anything about her own life off-screen. Both she and Carlo are very private people.’
“They obviously have a son together and wish each other well.” Well, they’ll always be FAMILY. OH MY GOD. Imagine going to a family event, checking out your first cousin and thinking “why not.” Reader, she married him, had a baby with him and then separated from him and it doesn’t even sound like they’ve gotten a divorce!!! This story is bonkers! Why did no one tell me this?
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
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- Picture By: Marco Secchi / Photoshot/Retna – London July 22nd 2008. – Press briefing ahead of UK release of the controversial triller “Shoot on Sight” Actress Greta Scacchi – Job: 47979 Ref: MSI – Non-Exclusive *World Rights Only* *Unbylined uses will incur an additional discretionary fee!*,Image: 518479680, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: World Rights – Fee Payable Upon Reproduction – For queries call Photoshot Global HQ – London + 44 (0)20 7421 6000 , also New York Office Tel : + 1 646-429-8731 and Hamburg Office Tel +49 (0)40 530 240 5959, Model Release: no, Credit line: Marco Secchi / Avalon
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- GRETA SCACCHI ARRIVING AT THE CARLTON WOMEN IN FILM AND TELEVISION AWARDS AT THE LONDON HILTON, PARK LANE 06/12/02 PICTURE BY / GRETA SCACCHI,Image: 541527446, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: WORLD RIGHTS – Fee Payable Upon Reproduction – For queries contact Photoshot – sales@photoshot.com London: +44 (0) 20 7421 6000 Florida: +1 239 689 1883 Berlin: +49 (0) 30 76 212 251, Model Release: no, Credit line: Marc Larkin / Avalon
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- Greta Scacchi leaving the Rankin: Fishlove – private view at Pertwee, Anderson And Gold Gallery in London. 25th October 2012. ZB5066_213185_0015,Image: 544596076, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: WORLD RIGHTS – Fee Payable Upon Reproduction – For queries contact Photoshot sales@photoshot.com London: +44 (0) 20 7421 6000 Florida: +1 646 717 6785 Berlin: +49 (0) 30 76 212 251, Model Release: no, Credit line: James Warren / Avalon
Someone once told me that those relationships that cause huge amount of drama in a family, are actually over pretty fast once they are made public and official.
As in, they feed on the drama and on the “forbidden” aspect but once all that quiets down, the relationship breaks because it becomes just like any other mundane relationship where you fight over bills and housework and stuff. This reminded me of that. Whole family was in upheaval and now they’ve been quietly separated for 12 years
Maybe so, but it sounds like they were together quite a while if they had a son in 1997 and split in 2010.
It’s bloody difficult to get a divorce in Italy. Takes at least five years, and the stress often isn’t worth it, given how toxic and misogynistic the legal system is.
That’s exactly what happened with 2 people in my family: They made a big loud dramatic announcement about how they were SO IN LOVE AND COULDN’T POSSIBLY BE EXPECTED TO DENY THESE FEELINGS ONE MINUTE LONGER. It devastated our family, especially the spouses of the 2 people in question. The whole thing was over before we could even process what was happening, but its ripple effects are still affecting many people, many years later. And yet WE are the a**holes if we dare even mention that it happened. I wish I could say more, but a few key people in my family still don’t know about it—and my goal at this point is to keep them blissfully unaware.
First cousin marriage is legal in about 20 states as of today! It isnt my thing but it was very common back in the horse and carriage days. Also I love Greta, she is in a new show called Darby and Joan through Acorn TV. It is a delight! She stars with Bryan Brown and I love the show. I recommend it highly.
A friend of mine has a brother who is married to his first cousin. This is in Spain. It is apparently legal, but still frowned upon.
Researching our family tree, yup, we had first cousins marry each other. I was so horrified, I researched it a bit and found it was fairly common. Yipes!
There’s something about your comment that’s killing me. Part of it reads like you’re saying 1997 is “back in the horse and carriage days”!!!!
It wasn’t unusual among old royal families. King George IV married 1st cousin Caroline; Queen Victoria’s granddaughter Victoria of Edinborough married 1st cuz Ernest of Hesse. There are a few more. 2nd cousin marriages are common. Aren’t Liz & Phil 2nd cousins?
Further back in time, there were marriages between half-siblings. King Tut married his half (possibly full) sister & must have hit puberty early because they had 2 stillborn premature babies.
That was a bit different – keeping royal blood in the lineage meant a lot of intermarrying. If you don’t have the idea that God appointed your family alone to rule some lands etc or feel like you need to keep your “blue blood” pure, there is and was no real reason to marry your cousin unless you live in Shelbyville, lol.
Yup. First cousin love explains the genetic triumph that is the modern royal family.
yup, hence the “Hapsburg Jaw”.
It wasn’t that unusual amongst common people either though, especially in rural areas where marrying your cousin kept the farm in the hands of the same family. (Or there were, you know, not that many other people around. We have valleys where people infamously only have one or two last names) There are studies on it, a simple first cousin marriage has very little effect on any child that may spring from it, and it’s pretty much as healthy as all other children. Doing this more often though, raises the risks exponentially. Hence the Hapsburgs, where it wasn’t just cousins, but uncles and nieces too, etc. etc. etc. Now, Egyptian pharaohs, that’s a complex story. Were they inbred? Yes. Were they as inbred as we think they were? Probably not. It has a lot to do with who counted as sister and as wife and mother, and how royalty was inherited. Plus they all were polygamous, so that makes it even more confusing.
Liz and Phil were 3rd cousins via Queen Victoria.
My Mom told me how her aunt would say, warningly, “Cousins do marry”, as her reasoning to make the boys sleep outside when all the kids were around.
She and her female cousin would laugh as this…and then this cousin married her cousin.
Ugh.
Just googled & watched the trailer for Darby & Joan. That looks like fun! Thanks for the rec!
As for Greta & her cousin, well, their son only has one set of great-grandparents. Family reunions must be…interesting.
So the son his parents are also his aunt and uncle!?well in African culture we call every one elder Aunt and Uncle Lol.
Hawaiians do that, too, Auntie & Uncle for all kupuna (elders). I’ll never forget the first time I got called auntie, made me feel old; ditto for the first time I got ma’am’d.
Lawyer here. Family law isn’t my specialty, but the actual number of states that allow first-cousin marriages is really… something. In fact, in some states only “double-cousin” marriages are prohibited.
On a personal note, I have dozens and dozens of cousins (my mom is one of 12, my dad one of 4). I can’t think of a single one that even the thought of hooking up with doesn’t make me want to vomit. 8 billion people in this world and you want to share more genetics? No thanks.
What is a double cousin marriage?
A double cousin marriage is when you are cousins on both parents’ sides. So, two brother who marry two sisters and produce children, those cousins could not marry because they are cousins through both mother’s and father’s lines…
I think double cousins are double first cousins. For example two brothers marry two sisters. The children of each marriage are double first cousins as they share two sets of grandparents.
Mr. R`s mother met his father at her sister’s wedding where they were both in the bridal party. His father was the groom’s nephew. They do look a lot more like their double cousins! Nothing incestuous about it, just more connected. It had to be a lot more common back in the day.
exactly how I feel. my cousins are CLOSE FAMILY. spent a lot of time together growing up. not quite siblings, but definitely close.
the thought of?…EW EW EW!!!
Anyone else thinking of Jinkx Monsoon’s joke from Drag Race? Trinity’s breakup line: “Let’s just be cousins.”
Jajaja I live!
Best ref ever
Wow I haven’t thought of or read about Greta Scacchi in years. I remember this and was grossed out by it then and am grossed out by it now. I honestly think this is what tanked her career.
I literally just started listening to the audiobook of Persuasion that she narrates about an hour ago so seeing this on Celebitchy is even more weird for me. I will have to just block out this information for the rest of the book… Although now that I think of it, marrying your cousin was considered normal in Austen’s time. Not much of a stretch for her then.
Whoa blast from the past! Is she Australian? I remember her and Claudia Karvan being the coolest, most beautiful 90s dreams when I was a teen.
Just googled her and she had some not nice Weinstein run-ins. And the cousin-husband, what a strange story.
She has a new show on Acorn TV called “Darby and Joan” set in Queensland Australia. Bryan Brown plays “Darby”. The light-hearted murder-mystery show is excellent. I really enjoyed it. The first-class cinematography provides excellent scenic landscape porn of beautiful Queensland, Australia. Cannot wait to visit Brisbane.
No, she’s English, but she’s spent time over the years in Australia and her daughter, Leila, was born there.
She was great in Presumed Innocent and she’s still gorgeous. I remember this story from back in the day – this is what made everyone cool off her – she went from big name movie star to obscurity because of that scandalous marriage and I believe the family is still torn apart over it. It’s pretty gross when you think about it and they had a kid together. Yep that kid’s parents are also his aunt and uncle.
She also played “Tuppence” in a Season 2 episode of PBS Marple called “By the Pricking of My Thumbs” She was beautiful and her acting was excellent.
ETA: Anthony Andrews plays “Tommy” as in “Tommy & Tuppence”.
THANK YOU. That’s what I just saw her in recently!
To clarify, the kid’s parent are not also his aunt and uncle, but his first cousins, once removed. So a little less grody?
His parents aren’t his aunt and uncle. His grandparents, however, are also his great aunt and great uncle.
You’re right everyone! Sorry – it’s early, I need my coffee. Ok it’s still gross though. @BayTampabay you’re right, she’s a terrific actress – real star power and the camera loves her.
Did they lift that from The Times, because she was interviewed in that 2-3 weeks ago? I have a sub, Kaiser, if you ever want an article from it :))
Greta, yeah. She annoys me because she used to keep complaining about being pretty. I thought we hadn’t heard from her for so long, because she was off doing indie movies.
What in Rudy Giuliani hell is this?!
They didn’t frown upon this in earlier times BC they didn’t understand the genetic consequences. Remember reading not without my daughter by Betty mamoody (sally field in the film) and how cousin marriages were at time if writing the book common in Iran. One of her husband’s relatives had a son who had a serious deformity most probably due to incestuous marriage of his parents.
Incest, or marrying cousins or other family members, doesn’t cause deformities or genetic anomalies, it simply increases the possibility of the manifestation of any genetic anomaly that family may have.
The earlier comment about 1997 and horse and carriage days made me snort. My 16-year-old daughter likes to remind me that I was born “in the 1900s.” 🤦♀️
Ahhh the 1900s, at the dawn of which women could not vote or own property. While I still embrace the 1980s as the decade that made me who I am, I’m not gonna claim the entire century. Just cuz it happened in 1910 doesn’t mean it’s cool now. 😵💫
In my friend’s indigenous Nigerian culture, the first step of marriage is for the grooms’ family members to go introduce themselves to the brides’ family, announcing that their son is intent on marrying this woman. At that meeting both sides go through their lineage at least 3 generations back to make sure they’re not related. The slightest relation and the marriage is off.
While this has been tradition for hundreds of years, the British who’ve been marrying their first cousins for hundreds of years, have the audacity to call them savages. 😡
This is a big deal in Australian Aboriginal culture too. Funny these “savages” didn’t need to wait for the advent of genetic science to understand the benefits of not inter-marrying!
I don’t like to judge the relationships of other people, but that really is weird. Yes, it was common in the 19th century and earlier. On my family tree we have at least one first cousin marriage…..in around 1810. My ancestors lived in North Carolina, on farms and in small towns. It was much harder to travel, to meet and communicate with people who didn’t live near you. And there just weren’t as many people then, in general. So people married their cousins sometimes.
But that was then, and this is now! I mean, it was almost the 21st century, and she didn’t grow up in a culture that is OK with such a close degree on consanguinity in marriages. And they had a kid? Did they not think this might be hard for their child, that people might find out they’re cousins and think it’s kind of icky?
My husband had a colleague from Charleston, SC, which has a notoriously insular social scene. His grandparents were first cousins. They married in the 1930s. I even thought THAT was weird, and it was Charleston in the pre-WWII era. Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were second or third cousins and Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip shared a great-grandmother ( think?) in Queen Victoria. But that’s quite different. A first cousin is a CLOSE relative.
To be fair, could any man be good enough after Vincent D’onofrio?
She used to be quite the hot actress and had some great roles like White Mischief and Presumed Innocent. Her career seemed to drop off after hooking up with the cousin because it is really unusual and kinda weird. She had a part in the series Versailles and almost didn’t recognize her. Some cultures still have cousin marriage it but it’s no longer the norm here and not even sure if it was ever really that common historically, although it is still allowed in some states. Wonder why this story came up since they’ve been separated for years or if they can just get an annulment. Anyway, it’s her private life.
My Dads side of the family had 2 of his sisters marry a set of 2 brothers.
#1. Sister (Bride) had all her sisters in the wedding party.
#2. Sister met the Grooms younger brother at the wedding.
Yeah, double cousin kids and they pretty much were like a small town baseball team. lol
And yes, the jokes went on forever.
“Date somebody from outta town, can’t ya?” lol
Think Christy Turlington’s sister is married to Ed Burn’s brother. They also have the double cousin kids things.
I had a high school friend whose parents discovered they were fathered by the same man when she was 17! She was ordered all kinds of tests and turned up to be ok. Was rather pretty, smart, became a doctor.
So they were only half siblings. Have read about couples who discovered they were 100% siblings after growing up separately as adopted kids, meeting, and falling in love. Horrifying!
I personally find cousin marriages horrifying, but I also come from a Pakistani culture, and let me tell you, first cousin marriages are pretty common in the culture, even to this day. It’s highly encouraged and make up so many of the marriages. It’s even highly depicted on tv soap operas, and not as a negative. No one bats an eye at it. I find it so odd.
I have double first cousins! My Dad’s sister married my Mom’s brother. Sometimes I forget who knows who at extended family functions. LOL
I’ve never liked her. I don’t care who she marries, but I’ve never liked her in any movie.
Since her dad was horrified by the pairing (I mean, I’m not surprised) and she’s Italian (this appears not to be common for them, I think?), I wonder how she managed to fall for her cousin.
Since she’s also in the public eye and probably has access to meeting lots of different people, I’m surprised she’d need to be with her cousin of all people.
This explains her daughter marrying Sean Penn!!
Just looking through her Wikipedia page it would seem that once her parents separated when she was 4, she really didn’t spend much time with her father in Italy, but instead lived with her mom and then when she remarried they moved to Australia. All this to say, yes he may have been a first cousin but I wonder how much they had to do with each other before. Just a thought.