Love Bites: Celebrity RelationshipsSusan Sarandon explains why marriage isn’t for her
Susan Sarandon believes in love, but marriage is a different story — well, when it comes to her own personal life anyway.
During an appearance on "Katie," the 66-year-old talked about her 2009 split from Tim Robbins, with whom she had been in a relationship with for 23 years, and the "Cloud Atlas" star candidly shared her view on the institution of marriage, saying that it was something that never felt right to her.
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"I believe in [marriage] for other people," Sarandon, who is now dating her much younger business partner Jonathan Bricklin, told Katie Couric on Tuesday's show. "I think if it works for you, that's fabulous. I don't know, I was always hesitant [of] this idea of locking it in. I thought it would make it less spontaneous. … For me personally, maybe it was growing up a hippie at the time I did, it was never high [on my list of priorities]."
Although they didn't have a marriage certificate, Sarandon said that her relationship with Robbins, 54, was a committed one. "We have two fabulous boys and also he basically helped me raise my daughter, who I had when I met him," said Sarandon, referring to their sons — Jack, 23, and Miles, 20 — and her 27-year-old daughter, actress Eva Amurri, who she had with Italian film director Franco Amurri. "We were definitely committed. We had kids and property — you can't get more committed than that. We had a lot of great things going on."
Sarandon also talked about being married to actor Chris Sarandon, of "The Princess Bride" fame, when she was a college student, noting that when they said "I do" it was for practical reasons. "I got married when I was 20 to stay in school because I was living with Chris Sarandon, who was a graduate student," she said. "I was at the Catholic University of America and at that time way back when you couldn't live together and still be in school." Each year they would discuss whether they should continue their marriage. "We just kind of 'renewed' every year if we wanted to, and then at a certain point after eight years we stopped renewing. He's very happy now. That was an amicable split."
On the show Sarandon also showed off some of her ping-pong moves; she's a big fan of the game and co-owns the Manhattan ping-pong club SPiN with boyfriend Bricklin. Early on in their relationship, Sarandon denied that she was dating Bricklin, who is more than 30 years her junior. However they've since let their guard down a bit, showing some PDA at the U.S. Open in August. While appearing on "The View" last month, Sarandon talked about romancing younger men. "I don't go by age," she said. "I go by the soul of a person. I think that when you really love a person, the age thing, the gender, the color, none of that matters. It's really beyond that."
[Related: Susan Sarandon and much younger beau indulge in PDA at the U.S. Open]
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