Celebrity mismatch

BE honest, how did you feel when you heard Jude Law and Sadie Frost were having problems with their marriage? I'll admit to a certain surprised delight, with a second surprise coming instantly afterwards as I hadn't been aware of bearing any ill will toward the actors. In fact, I had always believed that I actively liked Jude, admired his willingness, not unlike David Beckham's, to embrace family life.

Consider the facts: he is rich, talented and so absurdly good looking it makes you wonder what kind of cosmic-strength elephant crack God was on when he made the rest of us. And yet Jude got married when he was 25, committed himself to raising another man's child, and swiftly had three of his own. Let's face it, most guys his age and in his position would be taking full advantage of all that empty sex which must be floating around.

And while we're on the subject, what exactly is 'empty sex' and why is it generally assumed to be sexier than 'full sex'? Does the latter refer to when you're a bit bloated, say immediately after a pizza, and not feeling all that horny? No more effective contraceptive than a Domino's 12-inch, that's what I always say. Anyway, to return to Jude Law, why do we take pleasure in his pain? Are we, like Matt Damon in The Talented Mr Ripley, simply jealous of his life? Or is it that celebrity culture seems so artificial to us, we find it impossible to truly empathise with any of its denizens? Jude 'n' Sadie, Norman 'n' Zoe, Anna 'n' Enrique, Rose West 'n' That Bloke From Slade Who She Was Bizarrely Dating - they are just so many Aunt Sallies and we enjoy watching them fall apart.

It does seem that famous folk are incapable of staying together, or perhaps it's just that everyone is incapable of staying together but we only pay attention to the famous ones? Whatever way around it is, it certainly doesn't surprise me that actors particularly find monogamy such a challenge.

Quite apart from the tempting sexual titbits which are constantly being laid across their path, actors are paid to inhabit a false world, to confuse reality with fantasy. And we like it when they get muddled. Daniel Day-Lewis learns to throw knives and butcher meat for his part in Gangs Of New York, staying in character for the duration of the shoot, and we get all excited about his commitment to the role. So how can we then be cynical when Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz carry their screen relationship forward into real life? It's just another kind of Method acting, the method being to find out what's inside each other's pants.

Actors are romantics. They have to be for their jobs. That's why they are so quick to marry. Marriage is a public act of faith, a willing suspension of disbelief, a high-wire act of the heart. When an actor gets married, they are saying that they will be able to stay with that one person for the rest of their life, forsaking all other shags, no matter how much they've had to drink, till death takes them off to the great VIP area in the sky. What could be more romantic?

The thing that most people won't admit is that the exact same goes for divorce. It's romantic too. Divorce is saying that you believe in ideal love, that you made a mistake, that you won't settle for anything less than perfection in a relationship, and that you still believe you can find that with someone else. Fighting to save a marriage, working out your differences - those things are for people who never walked down a red carpet or had sex in a limo or watched dwarf-porn with Don Simpson. What do they know about love?

If as the tabloids have reported, Jude 'n' Sadie are trying to fix their problems and stay together, that makes them a pretty unusual couple by the standards of the movie business. Certainly, a permanent split will cause extra problems for Jude, who will be left with a very inappropriate Beatles lyric tattooed on his arm: "Sexy Sadie. You came along to turn on everyone, Sexy Sadie." Of course, he should have done the sensible, unromantic thing and gone with "I am the eggman, they are the eggmen. I am the walrus, goo goo g'joob."

Another question: do Jude 'n' Sadie have a pre-nup? It used to be that you knew you had made it in Hollywood if you had a stalker, now the emblem of success is the pre-nuptial agreement in which each partner agrees what the other will get in the event of a split.

Famous pre-nuppers include Paul McCartney and Heather Mills (All you need is love ... and a good lawyer), Andre Agassi and Brooke Shields, Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones, and most recently sour-faced sweethearts Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. Apparently J- Lo gets $7.7million if Ben has an affair, $1.5million if he lies to her, which rather makes me think that all he needs to do is be a really good fibber and he can sleep with who he wantsu Email Peter at peter.ross@sundayherald.com

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