Are celebs doomed to divorce?

IT was one of the glitziest showbiz weddings of recent years. Elizabeth Taylor was matron of honour, Michael Jackson best man. Diana Ross, Anthony Hopkins, Joan Collins and Lauren Bacall were among the guests.

Liza Minnelli walked down the aisle to Unforgettable, sung by Natalie Cole and the pictures were splashed all over OK! Magazine.

But last weekend, after just 16 months of marriage, Minnelli, daughter of Judy Garland, and her producer husband David Gest announced their separation. It wasn't entirely unexpected. Earlier this year they cancelled plans for an anniversary party for 1,200 guests in Times Square. The reasons cited were the war in Iraq and Minnelli's imminent return to rehab but it seems as though the relationship was already in trouble.

Kym Marsh and ex-EastEnders actor Jack Ryder's wedding was on a much smaller scale, although they, too, sold the photographs to a glossy magazine. Yesterday, they announced they were going their separate ways after a year as man and wife. According to a statement released by their agent, the marriage, already said to be "turbulent" has come under increasing pressure as the ex-Hear'Say singer tries to establish a solo pop career.

The celebrity circuit is littered with failed marriages. Liz Taylor and Joan Collins have notched up 12 between them. Joan is now trying to make it work with husband number five, Percy Gibson, and seems to be doing pretty well considering the 32-year age gap - better than a host of more conventional couples. Recent casualties include Sharon Stone and Phil Brostein, Jude Law and Sadie Frost and Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton. Angelina and Billy Bob were so in love, they said, they wore phials round their necks containing each other's blood. Now they're more likely to be spitting blood at each other; theirs is clearly not the most amicable of divorces.

There are some celebrity pairings so bizarre no one seriously believes they will make it past their paper wedding anniversary. Four-times married Minnelli, and the slightly sinister-looking Gest, who is never seen without dark glasses and collects Judy Garland memorabilia, are a case in point. But even they seemed a model of marital normality compared to Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley.

However, it isn't just the oddball couples who crack under pressure. Even the most cynical celebrity watchers were surprised when Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman and Kate Winslet and Jim Threapleton decided to call a day on what were thought to be two of the most solid marriages in showbiz.

Kate and Jim split up shortly after the birth of a daughter, while Tom and Nicole had been married for ten years and together had two adopted children. They blamed the pressures of work, although rumours of Cruise's relationship with Vanilla Sky co-star Penelope Cruise did little to help.

The couple had always been the subject of media speculation. In 1998 they won a lawsuit against The Sunday Express after it claimed their marriage was a sham. Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford also found it difficult to deal with gossip and took out full-page newspaper advertisements following claims their marriage was in trouble in the early 90s. "Marriage is hard enough without all this negative speculation," they said, but split in 1994.

Celebrity gossip is huge, thanks to the Internet and a profusion of magazines that seek to rake over the tiniest details of a celebrity's life. Last week's Heat magazine contained the shocking revelations that Sharon Stone had stumpy toes, while Calista Flockhart, Cameron Diaz and a host of other high profile women suffered from acne. Living under the glare of the spotlight, is it any wonder that some celebrities find the heat too much to bear?

Actress Amanda Holden put the blame for her marriage break-up with Les Dennis very firmly on the media.

"I think that if I'm really honest - and I hate admitting it - I think we allowed outside pressures to crumble us," she told chat show host Michael Parkinson earlier this year.

Media intrusion may be a factor in some break-ups but Dr Joan Harvey, a chartered psychologist at Newcastle University, believes they have less to do with media pressure than fundamental incompatibility. Some couples are fooled by their mutual fame into thinking they have something in common.

"Often the thing that brings them together is that they're both in the celebrity world, they move in the same circles. Everything is fine at first and they think that's enough but it isn't. Fame itself is not what I would define as being one of the factors for a long-lasting relationship," she says.

Marrying someone famous can boost a flagging career or help launch a nobody into the celebrity stratosphere. Liz Hurley was virtually unknown before she appeared at the Four Weddings and a Funeral premiere with Hugh Grant wearing that Versace safety pin dress. Famous in Britain for The Darling Buds of May, Catherine Zeta Jones was struggling as a B-list actress until she married Michael Douglas. She's now one of Tinseltown's most bankable stars.

But once the novelty has worn off and the memories of the lavish wedding have faded, celebrity marriages often run into trouble. They may be worth millions and have lifestyles we can only dream of but, when it comes to relationships, famous people are subject to the same pressures as the rest of us.

Dr Harvey says: "A long-term relationship is all about compatibility and, apart from being celebrities, some of these couples have absolutely nothing in common. Having said that, there are some cases where they don't even stay together long enough to find out whether they have anything in common."

She cites three factors essential for a lasting marriage: personality, attitudes and interests. If these are at odds with each other, the marriage is likely to fail, regardless of how successful the couple are and how many column inches they generate. There could be fewer more glamorous pairings than Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner but there were too many differences between them for their marriage ever to work.

Despite the myriad of failures, some couples are proving that celebrity and connubial bliss are not mutually exclusive. Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston have defied all predictions to remain together, as have Guy Ritchie and the notoriously headstrong Madonna. Posh and Becks seem happier than ever but even their romance pales into insignificance compared with that of film star Paul Newman and his actress wife Joanne Woodward.

The couple met in 1953, married in 1958 and are still together 50 years later. It hasn't always been easy. In the early years, Woodward admits she found it difficult combining her husband's career with bringing up a family. There was even a touch of professional jealously, but rather than cave in to pressure, they stuck together and made it work. In a world where celebrities change their spouses almost as often as their designer outfits, they are an example to everyone.