Billy Crudup offered a rare insight into his equation with his ex Mary Louise Parker, 22 years after their relationship imploded in a massive scandal.
Crudup and Parker had been dating for seven years – and she was seven months pregnant with their son William – when he dumped her for Claire Danes in 2003.
Danes and Crudup met while making the romantic comedy Stage Beauty, in an echo of the way he and Parker became an item while acting in Bus Stop on Broadway.
Parker gave birth to William in January 2004 and Crudup’s dalliance with Danes went public shortly thereafter, triggering an explosive controversy.
In the end Crudup and Danes’ romance also fell apart by 2007, since when he has married Naomi Watts and she has tied the knot with Hugh Dancy.
Now Crudup, 57, has been asked about how he gets along with Parker, 61, and artfully replied: ‘Well, without commenting on any of our…. Our adoration for our son is boundless,’ in an interview with The Times of London.
Billy Crudup offered a rare insight into his equation with his ex Mary Louise Parker, 22 years after their relationship imploded in a massive scandal; pictured in 2002Â
Crudup raved about his son in his new interview, saying: ‘He has, through the mash-up of the two of us, been endowed with superpowers for theatricality’; Crudup pictured last month
Their son William, now 21, was given his mother’s surname and has followed his parents’ footsteps into Hollywood, becoming a filmmaker as well as an actor.
He was still a teenager when he directed his 2022 feature debut Forty Winks, which boasted a glittering cast including John Turturro and Susan Sarandon.
Crudup raved about his son in his new interview, saying: ‘He has, through the mash-up of the two of us, been endowed with superpowers for theatricality. He’s such a bada**. Mary-Louise and I appeared in most of his films.’
He first met Parker while they were acting in a 1996 revival of William Inge’s play Bus Stop, which was previously made into a beloved movie starring Marilyn Monroe.Â
They became a live-in couple and conceived their son – but when Parker was seven months pregnant, Danes caught Crudup’s eye on the set of their film Stage Beauty.
Danes was also dating singer Ben Lee at the time when she was introduced to Crudup, who was 11 years her senior, and they both left their respective relationships for each other.Â
A scandal exploded across Hollywood and Crudup and Danes were heaped with opprobrium, while Parker the new mother became a figure of widespread sympathy.
She only enhanced her goodwill when she won a Golden Globe and said onstage that The West Wing actress Janel Moloney ‘told me she would pay me $1,000 if I thanked my newborn son for my boobs looking so good in this dress. So get out your checkbook. William Atticus Parker, thank you so much from your mother.’
Crudup and Parker had been dating for seven years – and she was pregnant with their son William – when he dumped her for Claire Danes in 2003; Crudup and Danes pictured in 2005Â
Their son William, now 21, was given his mother’s surname and has followed his parents’ footsteps into Hollywood; Parker and William are pictured in 2020
Parker has been circumspect about discussing the love triangle in public, only glancingly alluding to the scandal in her memoir Dear Mr. You a decade ago.
The book was comprised of 34 letters to different men in her life, and although none of them appears to have been written directly to Crudup, she did seem to address their relationship in a note called Dear Mr. Cabdriver.
She discussed feeling unwanted while ‘pregnant and alone,’ writing that she was ‘trying to get through’ her circumstances but was ‘by myself every night and every morning’ with ‘no one’ and ‘nothing’ to help her.
However she also reflected that ‘whatever I was walking through’ at that juncture had been ‘part of my life, one piece of a bigger story that is mostly beautiful.’
Danes related her own version of the controversy the same year, saying: ‘That was really hard. I didn’t know how to not do that,’ on The Howard Stern Show.
‘I was just in love with him,’ she said, noting was 24 then and maintaining she ‘needed to explore that’ and ‘didn’t quite know what those consequences would be.’
Danes ultimately married Hugh Dancy in 2009 and has been with him ever since, while Crudup went down the aisle with Naomi Watts two years ago.Â
Crudup and Danes had a shock reunion this April, crossing paths and sharing a hug while both attending the New York University Tisch School of the Arts Gala.
They were seen chatting amiably, with Crudup leaning in towards Danes so he could hear her over the music, in footage obtained by People.Â
