Monica Bellucci and Tim Burton’s Relationship: All About the Actress and Director’s Romance
Tim Burton and Monica Bellucci sparked dating rumors long before they confirmed their relationship — now, the director and the actress have made a movie together, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which was released in the U.S. on Sept. 6, 2024.
“What I can say … I’m glad I met the man, first of all,” Bellucci told Elle France in June 2023, just after news broke that Burton had cast her in the highly anticipated sequel to the iconic 1988 film Beetlejuice. “It’s one of those encounters that rarely happens in life … I know the man, I love him and now I’m going to meet the director — another adventure begins.”
Burton rose to fame directing movies including 1985’s Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, 1989’s Batman and 1990’s Edward Scissorhands. Beetlejuice was only his second feature film. Italian star Bellucci had a career as a model before appearing in movies such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) and the Matrix sequels (in 2003 and 2021).
Though Burton and Bellucci met many years before, they didn’t officially become a couple until 2023, making their first public appearance on the red carpet of that year’s Rome Film Festival. Up until they started working together on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the couple kept their work completely separate from their relationship. “I’m with Tim. Not with Tim Burton,” Bellucci told Paris Match in June 2024.
Read on to learn all about Burton and Bellucci’s relationship.
They first met in 2006
Burton and Bellucci first met on the red carpet at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival in France — but it was a brief meeting, when both were in long-term relationships with other people.
The two reconnected in October 2022 at the Lumière Film Festival in Lyon, France, where Bellucci presented Burton with the festival’s lifetime achievement Lumière Award. “All my life put together, I have never felt so much love as tonight,” Burton said at the event, per The Times. “Welcome to the best funeral I ever had.”
Not long after, the pair sparked dating rumors when they appeared arm-in-arm in Madrid. It wasn’t until October 2023 when they made a public appearance together on a red carpet at the Rome Film Festival in Italy. Burton was there to support Bellucci at the premiere of her film Maria Callas: Lettere e Memorie. Coverage of the event in Rome described Burton as “so in love and happy,” according to The Independent.
Burton was in a long-term relationship with Harry Potter star Helena Bonham Carter from 2000 to 2014. The former couple welcomed son Billy in 2003, and daughter Nell in 2007. The two made headlines for their unusual living arrangement, keeping separate houses next door to each other, which were connected by a hallway.
“We just have two houses knocked together because mine was too small,” Bonham Carter told The Telegraph in 2010. “We see as much of each other as any couple, but our relationship is enhanced by knowing we have our personal space to retreat to.” Though they were never married, when the relationship ended, Bonham Carter described it as “a divorce.”
“I went through a very painful divorce,” she said in 2022 on the podcast Therapy Works. “It was a long-lasting thing. That’s the other thing, it’s not that finite. It never ends. Even if you divorce somebody, it’s a kind of marriage if you have children with them. The relationship has to change. It’s a very complicated thing how to share the children.”
Bellucci married French actor Vincent Cassel (from Oceans 12 and Oceans 13) in 1999. The couple welcomed daughter Deva Cassel in 2004, and daughter Léonie Cassel in 2010. Deva told Gen V in 2023 that her parents “taught me to always look forward, always protect myself, always be kind and always keep wonder in mind … There’s much more, but the point is that they’ve taught me how to handle unexpected situations and live by my own rules, while always respecting people and the environment I’m in.”