Lovers come and go, some hop on for the ride, some are brief and beautiful. But none burn harder or faster than famous flames.

Celebrity breakups often cite the 'pressure of intense spotlight', 'distance apart' or 'conscious uncoupling'. But for whatever the reason, the make-ups and breakups are splashed all over tabloids.

Scroll through the list below for a few couples you may have forgot once used to be together…

1. Angelica Houston and Jack Nicholson

Angelica Houston met and fell for Jack Nicholson at a party at his house. It was 1971, she was 21 and it was the beginning of a very tumultuous relationship.

"In the overture to our relationship, Jack sent mixed messages. Alternately, he would ask me to stick around or would not call when he said he would. At one point, he told me he had decided that we should cool it, and followed that up with a call suggesting we dine together," Houston wrote in her memoir.

Their on again-off again relationship ended 16 years later in 1989, when Nicholson announced that another woman, Rebecca Broussard, was having his baby.

2. Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford

Cindy Crawford admitted to Oprah in 2013 that it was the age gap in that ultimately ended her four-year marriage to Richard Gere.

"It's hard to do that, it's hard to change in a relationship, because what one person might have signed up for, all of a sudden, you're not that anymore." The couple met when Crawford was 21 and Gere was 38.

3. Sean Penn and Madonna

Sean Penn and Madonna wed in 1985 at what was the start of a toxic four-year marriage.

Madge has previously said that Penn "destroyed her with his taste for drinking, moods and pornography". They were dubbed the 'Poison Penns'. He allegedly tied her to a chair and beat her. Another time, he hit her in the head with a baseball bat, and incident which landed Madonna in hospital.

4. Ryan Gosling and Sandra Bullock

Ryan Gosling has said (before meeting Eva Mendes, with whom he has a daughter, Esmerelda) that Sandra Bullock and another former flame, Rachel McAdams, were the "greatest girlfriend's of all time" and he "didn't know how anyone could top them".

5. Michael Jackson and Tatum O'Neal

The late King of Pop's first relationship was with the Paper Moon Oscar winner.

He was 17 at the time and she just 12. O'Neal has said in previous interviews that they were never lovers.

"I was just 12 and not at all ready for a real-life encounter…Michael, who was sweating profusely, seemed as intimidated as I was. He jumped up nervously and said, 'Uh…gotta go.'"

6. Sarah Jessica Parker and Robert Downey Jr.

SJP and Robert Downey Jr met and fell for one another on the set of 1984's highly forgettable film, Firstborn.

They dated for seven years, but the relationship began to unravel after Downey's substance abuse escalated. "I was so selfish," Downey told Parade in 2008. "I liked to drink, and I had a drug problem, and that didn't jibe with Sarah Jessica, because it is the furthest thing from what she is."

7. Liam Neeson and Helen Mirren

Neeson was at the beginning of his career when he began dating Mirren in the early '80s.

Their intriguing relationship has had little said about it, until Mirren brought it up on a UK Morning show last year.

“I went camping with an ex-boyfriend of mine, Liam Neeson,” Mirren remembered. “We went camping in Cornwall. He loved camping as well. And we had this little…car and Liam is 6’4”…his head was sticking out of the car, really. We had our tent in the back and all our little stuff, our little stove and everything.”

Neeson previously said about the relationship, “I fell in love with Helen Mirren. Oh, my God. Can you imagine riding horses in shiny suits of armor, having sword fights and stuff, and you’re falling in love with Helen Mirren? It doesn’t get any better than that.”

8. Sharon Stone and Christian Slater

This pair had a quick fling back in 2006. Stone was 11 years Slater's senior.

9. Jane Fonda and Roger Vadim

"If I have sex with someone else, it’s not betrayal, because I love you." These were the words French film director Roger Vadim told 10-years-his-junior, Jane Fonda soon after they started seeing each other. And the charm just kept coming.

A renowned gambler, it took five years for Fonda to pay off Vadim's creditors. ‘He validated me. I couldn’t conceive of leaving him,’ she later said.

Fona was Vadim's third wife, his first being Brigitte Bardot. Their marriage ended in 1973 after eight years and one daughter, Vanessa.

10. John Stamos and Paula Abdul

"It's so funny, because I sort of forgot [about our romance]. She was so adorable, and she was America's sweetheart," Stamos told Ellen DeGeneres in 2009 about his 1990 relationship with Abdul.

"I had just started Full House and she was the biggest star in the world. People were literally knocking me down to get to her! We had the time of our lives."

11. Brooke Shields and Liam Neeson

Casanova Neeson, eh? In Brooke Shields' memoir, released last year, the actress said she fell for Neeson after breaking up with her Princeton boyfriend and admits his movie star status allured her. "[He] wooed me with his brogue, his poetry and his s***ty choice of cheap pinot grigio wine." Neeson asked Shields to marry him three months after they met "without a ring".

The pair stayed together for a year until one day Neeson said he had to fly back to LA to check on his house. Shields told him to call when he arrived. He never did.

She told People magazine he proposed again later that year. "I said, 'No, no, no, because knowing you, you'll probably fall in love with your next leading lady and marry her, so I'm leaving myself out of this.' And I was dead right."

Neeson ended up marrying late actress Natasha Richardson in 1994.

12. Val Kilmer and Cher

The Top Gun star and iconic diva dated for 9 months in the 1984. Cher was 14 years Val's senior.

13. Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum

Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum met in Yugoslavia while filming their horror-comedy Transylvania 6-500 and were married for three years between 1987-1990. Davis later explained they nearly broke up because she was trying to be "too cool".

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"For some reason I decided that Jeff liked me only because he thought I was cool, aloof, and he thought the same thing about me. Finally, he takes me out to dinner one night, all serious, and I'm thinking, Uh-oh, I knew this was coming, and he says, 'We can't see each other anymore. I really like you, and you don't like me.' So I say, 'No, I really like you, too,' and that was it."

14. Brad Pitt and Juliette Lewis

Before his career sky-rocketed, forever sex symbol Brad Pitt dated Juliette Lewis for three years between 1990-1993.

During that time, Pitt made two movies with wild child Lewis, who was 16 when they began dating.

15. Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan

Ryan and Quaid married on Valentines Day in '91 after starring in three films together (D.O.A., Innerspace and Flesh and Bones).

Ryan only agreed to marry Quaid after he kicked his cocaine addiction. Their son Jack was born in 1992. The pair broke up in 2001 after Ryan had an affair with co-star, Russell Crowe.

Quaid later said, "When you break up, your whole identity is shattered. That's why it is like death. It is death. Next to losing a child, the breakup of a marriage is the hardest thing to go through."

16. Liv Tyler and Joaquin Phoenix

This unlikely pair met on the set of 1995's Inventing The Abbotts, started dating and eventually moved in together. They broke up in '98 but remain good friends.

"I'm a great believer in people coming into your life, and you into theirs, for a reason. And I know that when Liv and I met, it was for a reason - I really needed her and she really needed me. And at a certain point, I think we stopped evolving with each other, stopped progressing, and made a very mature decision to move on, even though there was still a great love there."

17. Goldie Hawn and Bill Hudson

Kate Hudson's parents met in 1975 and married a year later. They divorced in 1982 after six years and two children (Kate in '79 and her older brother Oliver in '76).

It seems that bad blood ensued, with Hudson saying earlier this year, “When we split up, she never had a bad word to say about me. But when Kurt came on the scene, the narrative changed and I became the big, bad wolf.”

18. Martha Stewart and Sir Anthony Hopkins

After her divorce from her first husband, Andrew, in 1990, Stewart and Hopkins dated…until she watched Silence of the Lambs and was unable to disassociate Hopkins from his character, Hannibal Lecter.

“Oh, I loved him, but he was…scary. I was going to invite him up to Maine; I have this beautiful home in Maine…but then I reconsidered because I saw that movie again," Stewart said in 2006.

19. Tom Cruise and Sofia Vergara

These A-Listers found love in a brief period of 2005 between the Penelope Cruz and Katie Holmes years.

Their relationship quickly fizzled due to Cruise's affiliation with the Church of Scientology.