These funny folks know the secret of lasting relationships: making each other (and us) laugh.
By sara brady — Written on Oct 02, 2009
Women and men the world over cite a sense of humor as one of the top qualities a romantic partner should have, and lest we forget, celebrities are just like us. They like to laugh, and even more, they like to make money. So it's no wonder funny people tend to marry each other and create more funny people, and then create funny work. Here are seven of the funniest celeb couples, with some of their best work.
Judd Apatow & Leslie Mann
The current king of comedy would still be flailing around with failed TV series if not for his uproariously hilarious wife. In our opinion, she totally made The 40-Year-Old Virgin with her side-splitting drunken roars demanding some "f*ckin' French toast!" Judd and Leslie met on the set of 1996's The Cable Guy, which he produced and she starred in. They married the following year, had two equally hilarious daughters, and have been making us laugh ever since. Why Geeks Are The New Chic
Steve Carell & Nancy Walls
When Daily Show correspondents marry, the results are nothing but awesome (see also: Jason Jones and Samantha Bee, among Canada's greatest gifts to the U.S.). Steve and Nancy met when he was teaching an improv class in L.A., lending an extra-special hot-for-teacher angle to their relationship. They married in 1995, moved to New York to work on The Daily Show, and later worked together again on The Office, where Steve made us cringe while screaming with laughter as Nancy tried to deflect his insanity as Michael Scott's girlfriend, put-upon realtor Carol.
Ben Stiller & Christine Taylor
If these two had only made Zoolander together, we'd still love them for it, because we secretly like to imagine that Owen Wilson lives over their garage when he's between relationships. But Ben, son of the famously funny Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller, and Christine, one of the good-humored survivors of Nickelodeon's Hey Dude, went on to costar in Dodgeball and Tropic Thunder. They met while filming the pilot for Jack Black's cult never-aired TV show, Heat Vision and Jack and have two kids, who we hope find their parents as funny as we do.
Amy Poehler & Will Arnett
It takes a seriously skilled comedic couple to play a vaguely incestuous brother-and-sister figure-skating team and make us laugh so hard it hurts. The couple met in 2000 and married three years later. Amy had a recurring role on Arrested Development as Will's character's wife, and the two starred as the insane skaters Stranz and Fairchild Van Waldenberg in 2007's Blades of Glory. Amy gave birth to the couple's first child last fall after doing heroic work as a major part of Saturday Night Live's election coverage while gigantically pregnant. Love From New York, It's Saturday Night!
Frances McDormand & Joel Coen
Joel and Frances's early collaborations, Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, and Fargo, are more darkly comedic than they are uproarious, but their 2008 project, Burn After Reading, put McDormand's comedic skills on full display. The couple married in 1984 and have a son, Pedro. Along with Joel's brother, Ethan, they've been doing some of the most inspired American filmmaking of the last 20 years, with Frances able to move almost effortlessly between comedy and drama, contemporary and period films.
Neither Pearl Harbor nor Daredevil was supposed to be funny, but, well, that wasn't really the Garnflecks' fault. Ben and Jennifer met while shooting Michael Bay's World War II epic in 2000, but she was married to Scott Foley at the time. They split in 2003, around the time Jen began filming the laughably terrible Daredevil, Ben's stab at a superhero lead. The movie and its spinoff, Elektra, which starred Jen, was terrible, but unlike Gigli, it didn't doom the relationship. Ben and Jennifer married in 2005 and have two daughters, and we still think they're pretty funny people, even when they're doing it on purpose. Top 10 Best And Worst Celeb Couples Right Now
Anne Bancroft & Mel Brooks
The forty-year marriage of comedy icon Mel and the delightful, wonderful Anne stands in a class by itself. They met in 1961 while rehearsing Perry Como's variety show; later that day, Mel bribed a coworker to tell him where Anne was having dinner so he could see her again. They married three years later, and were together until her death in 2005. Anne appeared in Mel's films Blazing Saddles, To Be or Not to Be, and Silent Movie, and was by all accounts quite a funny and extraordinary lady. We only wish they'd made more movies together.
Photo via Bauer-Griffin.