Juicy Details About The Affair That Ruined Michelle Pfeiffer's First Marriage

Sometimes life imitates art with such uncomfortable precision, you'd swear the universe has a cruel streak. When Michelle Pfeiffer and John Malkovich stepped onto the set of "Dangerous Liaisons" in 1988, they were playing out a tale of seduction and ruinous desire. The movie would go on to achieve universal acclaim and cement itself as a classic. No one anticipated, though, that Pfeiffer and Malkovich would take method acting quite so far.

Back then, both stars were married. Pfeiffer had tied the knot with Peter Horton in 1981 after meeting him in an acting class in Los Angeles. Their seven-year union was seemingly solid. They had collaborated professionally, with Horton directing his wife in a 1985 ABC Afterschool Special and appearing alongside her in "Amazon Women on the Moon." Pfeiffer also credited Horton with rescuing her from a manipulative cult that had been draining her, financially and emotionally, during her early Hollywood days, according to The Sunday Telegraph — one of the many tragic details that shaped Pfeiffer before she became a household name. As for Malkovich, the actor had been married to fellow thespian Glenne Headly since 1982.

And yet something shifted on the French set of director Stephen Frears' 18th-century tale of aristocratic schemers vying for immortality. The chemistry between Malkovich's Machiavellian character Vicomte de Valmont and Pfeiffer's virtuous Madame de Tourvel didn't stop when the cameras stopped rolling, and the fallout would change their lives forever.

John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer's reported affair was long suspected, and the convenient collapse of both their marriages in 1988 raised plenty of eyebrows, but neither star ever addressed it publicly. The first person to confirm it was director Stephen Frears, who claimed in a 2003 profile for The New York Times that the romance was an open secret on set. "His marriage was breaking up," he said. "And during the movie, he was having an affair with Michelle Pfeiffer. 'Dangerous Liaisons' is about betrayal and lies and relationships unraveling. It was one of those times where reality and art intersect."

Well, that's certainly one way to put it. The consequences of this affair arrived swiftly enough, with both marriages imploding in 1988, the same year the Oscar-nominated film hit theaters. Headly's feelings about her ex-husband's infidelity weren't exactly subtle. The same New York Times article noted that she once referred to Malkovich as "the root of all evil." And the worst part was that the romance that cost him his marriage didn't survive either. Per a piece by The Age in 2003, Malkovich "cried for a year" after he and Pfeiffer went their separate ways, and he entered extensive therapy (per what he told Rolling Stone later) in a state of such profound emotional wreckage that he couldn't even form words. "For the first year and a half, I'd walk in, make noises and stuff, I just couldn't talk," he said.

For nearly four decades, Michelle Pfeiffer maintained complete silence about the affair, and she still hasn't uttered a single word about it. Small wonder, too, as she's known to prioritize her personal life over her career in the spotlight. In fact, a 2012 chat with Interview was as forthcoming as she got in discussing her divorce from Peter Horton. "I think my husband and I were both too young, and as we started growing up, our needs changed," she explained. "We didn't have an angry breakup — he even helped me pack my car." 

John Malkovich also spent the better part of the last four decades artfully dodging the topic in interviews, but he finally opened up on the "Fashion Neurosis" podcast in 2025. Ever the diplomat, he said, "In the work I do, you make emotional bonds with people very quickly. That's part of the work. Very rarely, those bonds extend beyond the work." The Academy Award-winner claimed his biggest regret was losing Pfeiffer as a collaborator. "When that relationship becomes more than collegial or more than a friendship, even a profound friendship, then at least in my experience, you lose a great colleague."

Both stars eventually found lasting happiness elsewhere. Pfeiffer married TV producer David E. Kelley in 1993. They've now been together more than 30 years and have two children. She, too, shares Malkovich's sentiments about not getting romantically involved with colleagues, famously refusing to work with her husband in a professional capacity — a rule she decided to break for the upcoming Apple TV+ series, "Margo's Got Money Troubles," according to Hello!. Malkovich, meanwhile, found love with Italian production designer Nicoletta Peyran on the set of "The Sheltering Sky" in 1989, and they have been together ever since.