Part 2
[Tea · Weddings] Two British actors turned out to have married quietly, and a third star's new memoir revisits the end of a famous marriage. Here's the week in secret weddings, using only what spokespeople, the couples themselves or the book have said.
Martin Freeman and Rachel Benaissa
"Rachel Benaissa" was new on Google Trends UK this week. Just Jared reports that a spokesperson for Martin Freeman, 55, confirmed to The Sun that he and Benaissa, 34, quietly married earlier this year, after six years together. No wedding date or location has been made public.
The news came after the couple appeared together on the red carpet at the BFI London Film Festival on October 14, where Freeman was promoting his new film "A Long Winter." The Sun published photos showing him wearing a gold band and her wearing a ring on her wedding finger.
Benaissa is a French writer and actress whose credits include "Normal People," "This Way Up" and the Netflix film "Irish Wish." The pair were first linked in 2020, and Freeman has kept the relationship mostly private, though he once talked about their shared love of cooking on the "Table Manners" podcast.
Ben Barnes and Aubrey Cleland
Ben Barnes, still best known to many as Prince Caspian in "The Chronicles of Narnia," shared photos of his wedding to actress and singer Aubrey Cleland. According to the X news summary, they married in front of 150 guests at Chateau de Lis, a European-style chateau in Oregon. The couple kept the relationship private after they began dating around 2024. Barnes proposed on New Year's Eve 2025 in England. His caption said he'd found his perfect match "in a world of billions." Fans responded with Narnia nostalgia and a lot of congratulations.
Joe Manganiello's "Bloodlines"
Not a wedding, but the other side of one. In his memoir "Bloodlines," released October 13, Joe Manganiello writes about a seven-year autoimmune illness. According to the memoir, as summarized in X news reports, his symptoms began after his 2015 marriage to Sofía Vergara, and emergency surgery in 2016 removed most of his large intestine. He credits Vergara with a key decision made while he was under anesthesia.
The book also covers the couple's 2024 divorce. Its most-shared passage is a shaman's claim, which Manganiello recounts, that his illness came from a voodoo curse placed by one of Vergara's exes. To be clear, that's a claim made in his book. It isn't an established fact, and Vergara's side of the story isn't in it. Manganiello says he's now symptom-free and remarried.
Why secret weddings are trending
Many stars have stopped selling wedding photos and simply confirm the marriage months later, often through a spokesperson or a single Instagram post. Rings on a red carpet have become the new announcement.
More weddings and splits are in our weddings tag.
