Inside Amelia Heinle And Thad Luckinbill's Real-Life Relationship
When Amelia Heinle joined the cast of "The Young and the Restless" in 2005, she had already fallen in love with one soap star, married him, and had his child. Heinle met "NCIS" actor Michael Weatherly when she played Steffi Brewster on the ABC half-hour soap "Loving" and Weatherly played Cooper Alden. Heinle and Weatherly were married from 1995-1997 and Heinle gave birth to a son they named August, according to Who's Dated Who?
After they split, Heinle went on to play Mia Saunders on "All My Children" before taking over the role of Victoria Newman on "Y&R" from Heather Tom, per Soaps in Depth, who now plays Katie on "The Bold and the Beautiful." That's where she met Thad Luckinbill, who had been with the CBS soap since 1999. Heinle once again fell in love with a co-star, but this time, things went a bit differently than her first soap star marriage.
Life imitates art for Amelia Heinle and Thad Luckinbill
When Thad Luckinbill landed the role of JT Hellstrom on "The Young and the Restless" in 1999, he was a soap opera newcomer that only had one other credit to his name at the time, a TV series called "Undressed," according to IMDb. JT was just a high school student at the time who was friends with the show's younger generation, including Billy Abbott.
After a star-crossed romance with Mackenzie Browning (Kelly Kruger) that resulted in her rejection, JT had a one-night-stand with Victoria Newman, daughter of Victor (Eric Braeden) and Nikki Newman (Melody Thomas Scott), and part of the most powerful family in town, per Soaps In Depth. That's when he was first romantically paired with Amelia Heinle, who would go on to become his wife in 2007. On screen, that one-night stand resulted in a pregnancy, with Victoria giving birth to a son named Reed. Off screen, Heinle and Luckinbill eventually became parents to two children, a son named Thaddeus and a daughter named Georgia, per TooFab.
Thad Luckinbill leaves Y&R, Heinle stays with the soap
In 2010, Thad Luckinbill chose to leave the part of JT after more than a decade when he didn't renew his contract. According to Michael Fairman TV, the print edition of CBS Soaps In Depth, broke the news, with Amelia Heinle offering positive support to her husband.
Heinle said, "It's a blessing in disguise. He's never been in this position before. [He] is going to grow as a person and as an actor. I hope he gets a cop show!," Michael Fairman TV. "He's done guest roles on primetime because he was working on Y&R. Now that he has nothing holding him back, you just wait — he's going to [succeed even more]. I know it. He's going to be so happy that this has happened."
Victoria and JT had divorced when he finally reunited with Mac. After Mac also had his baby, JT sued for custody of Reed and won, leaving Genoa City behind, per Soaps in Depth. While Victoria moved on, Heinle and Luckinbill's marriage seemed to be going strong.
Amelia Heinle and Thad Luckinbill decide to part ways
On March 1, 2017, TooFab reported that Thad Luckinbill had filed for divorce from Amelia Heinle, citing "irreconcilable differences." He had moved on from acting to movie producing by then and was listed one of the producers in the Oscar-nominated flick "La La Land." Interestingly enough, at around the same time their split was announced, Luckinbill returned to "The Young and the Restless" in a high-profile storyline.
In the story, Victoria and JT's teenage son Reed (Tristan Lake Lebu), had arrived in Genoa City to live with his mother, and JT was not far behind, saying his marriage to Mac was over and he wanted to rekindle things with Victoria. He moved back into her house, but soon JT was not acting like himself and was verbally, emotionally, and physically abusive to Victoria. One night, Victoria's mother, Nikki, found JT ready to strike her daughter, so she grabbed a fireplace poker and struck him over the head instead. Victoria, Nikki, Sharon Collins (Sharon Case), and Phyllis Summers (then played by Gina Tognoni) were also in the house and the women decided to bury JT's allegedly-dead body rather than tell the authorities, per Soaps in Depth.
More than a year later, JT turned up alive and fans learned his behavior stemmed from the effects of a brain tumor, per Soaps In Depth and that was the last "Y&R" fans saw of Luckinbill and JT.
Where Amelia Heinle and Thad Luckinbill stand today
Although Thad Luckinbill filed for divorce from Amelia Heinle more than five years ago, as of this writing, the pair still spent time working together on "The Young and the Restless" after the split, and no outlet has ever reported their divorce as final, although Soaps.com has referred to Luckinbill as Heinle's ex-husband in 2020.
That was also the year Heinle took to Instagram to wish Luckinbill a great birthday. "Happy Birthday to a really wonderful man, may all of your days be blessed! @thad.luckinbill #birthdayboy," Heinle wrote next to a photo of Luckinbill on the beach.
On screen, JT is supposedly in jail after the myriad of crimes he committed when he had that fateful brain tumor. And, as of this writing, Victoria is ending yet another bad marriage as she breaks things off with Ashland Locke (Robert Newman) in the spring of 2022, per Soaps In Depth. Perhaps Luckinbill will make another "Y&R" return as JT to see where the story takes himself and Heinle.