19 Gay Men Who Were Once Married to Women

4. Alan Cumming

The Scottish stage and screen actor is best known for his London stage appearances in Hamlet and the Accidental Death of an Anarchist, as well films like Emma, GoldenEye, the Spy Kids trilogy, and the X-Men series. Cumming was married to actress Hilary Lyon for eight years and he also had a two-year relationship with actress Saffron Burrows. Today, he is openly bisexual. Cumming currently lives with his husband, graphic artist Grant Shaffer. The couple legally married in January 2012.

5. Peter Marc Jacobson

Jacobson, a television writer, director and producer, is best known as the co-creator of the 90s sitcom, The Nanny, which he created and wrote with his then wife, actress Fran Drescher. Jacobson and Drescher had married in 1978, when they were both 21 years old. The couple divorced in 1999, after being separated for many years. They did not have any children. Jacobson came out following their split, but the two went on to co-create the 2011 television series Happily Divorced, based on their own lives.

6. Oscar Wilde

The famous author best remembered for his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and works like Salome and The Importance of Being Earnest was married to Constance Lloyd in May 1884. Canadian journalist Robert Ross had read Wilde’s poems and became ‘wildly’ attracted to the married novelist. By author Richard Ellmann’s account, “Ross was a precocious seventeen-year-old, so young and yet so knowing, was determined to seduce Wilde.” According to American memoirist Daniel Mendelsohn, Wilde, was “initiated into homosexual sex” by Ross, while his “marriage had begun to unravel after his wife’s second pregnancy, which left him physically repelled.” Another instance proved Wilde’s questionable sexuality. He was arrested after losing a libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry. The author had been engaged in an affair with the marquess’s son since 1891, but when the outraged marquess denounced him as a homosexual, Wilde sued. Wilde lost his case due to strong evidence proving his homosexuality and was sentenced to two years of hard labor.