Sacha Baron Cohen and Isla Fisher have announced they are getting divorced after two decades together. In a social media post announcing the split, the actors said they jointly filed to end their marriage last year. The pair, who have three children, met in 2001 and got engaged in 2004.
Sharing the news with a picture of themselves wearing tennis whites, they wrote: “After a long tennis match lasting over 20 years, we are finally putting our racquets down.”
In the post, published on Baron Cohen and Fisher’s Instagram stories on Friday, they said: “We have always prioritized our privacy, and have been quietly working through this change. We forever share in our devotion and love for our children. We sincerely appreciate your respecting our family’s wish for privacyThe pair first met at a party in Sydney, Australia. Baron Cohen later told The New York Times about their first encounter, saying Fisher was “hilarious”.
“We were at a very pretentious party, and me and her bonded over taking the mick out of the other people at the party. I knew instantly. I don’t know if she did.”
Baron Cohen rose to fame in the 1990s with his Ali G character, the infamous spoof wannabe gangster who became a comedy star.
Fellow actor Fisher appeared as Shannon Reed in long-running Australian soap Home and Away before moving to the big screen.
Her breakthrough role came in Wedding Crashers in 2005, and she also starred in Confessions of a Shopaholic. She has also had a series of children’s books published.
Last month, Baron Cohen and Australian actress Rebel Wilson got involved in a dispute ahead of the release of her memoir.
The book includes allegations against Baron Cohen, who is understood to have threatened legal action.
Wilson wrote that she was asked to do some things that were “derogatory to women or to my size” while shooting Baron Cohen’s 2016 film Grimsby, and some scenes made her feel like she was “being humiliated” and “sexually harassed”.
She likened the comedian to a “fourth-grade bully who teases the fat girl on the playground and tries to make her life a living hell”.
Baron Cohen’s lawyers have said the evidence shows her allegations have “no basis in reality” and are part of a “cynical commercial ploy to promote her book”.
They have supplied video footage of one scene in question, plus email exchanges, script excerpts and testimony from producers and crew members, which his lawyers say back up his case.
The memoir was due to be released in the UK on Thursday, but the release date has now been moved to 25 April. It has already been released in the US.
Source: BBC
