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Sweet Celebs Who Dated Really Awful People

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Some of the most likable stars in the business have quietly spent years tangled up with people who made their lives miserable.

Fame and fortune don’t come with an immunity chip when it comes to picking partners. Nicki Swift’s rundown of “Sweet Celebs Who Dated Really Awful People” runs through a string of A-listers — Rihanna, FKA twigs, Gigi Hadid, and Jennifer Aniston among them — who ended up on the receiving end of abuse, betrayal, or public humiliation from the people they loved. Some of these stories ended in courtrooms. Others just ended in headlines nobody wanted to read.

• Rihanna’s 2009 assault by then-boyfriend Chris Brown led to his felony assault conviction and became one of the most publicly scrutinized domestic violence cases in music history.
• FKA twigs filed a December 2020 lawsuit against Shia LaBeouf alleging relentless physical, emotional, and psychological abuse, sexual battery, and that he knowingly transmitted an STI to her during their 2018–2019 relationship.
• Gigi Hadid’s relationship with Zayn Malik ended in late 2021 after an altercation involving her mother, Yolanda Hadid, that resulted in Malik pleading no contest to harassment charges.

Rihanna and Chris Brown’s Public Reckoning

Few celebrity relationships have been picked apart as thoroughly as Rihanna and Chris Brown’s. The 2009 assault, which happened the night before the Grammys, turned into one of the defining domestic violence cases of the decade once details and photos became public. Brown ultimately pleaded guilty to felony assault, and the conviction followed him for years afterward, even as both artists’ careers kept climbing.

What made the case land so hard wasn’t just the violence itself — it was how visible it became almost instantly, at a moment when two of pop’s biggest young stars were dating in plain sight. For readers who’ve followed how differently the music industry treats its own when scandal breaks, the piece pairs well with Musicians That Are Nothing Like They Seem, which digs into other artists whose off-stage behavior didn’t match their public image.

FKA Twigs’ Lawsuit Against Shia LaBeouf

FKA twigs, born Tahliah Debrett Barnett, dated LaBeouf from 2018 into 2019 after meeting him on the set of “Honey Boy.” In December 2020, she filed a lawsuit accusing him of a pattern of abuse that went far beyond a bad breakup.

FKA twigs accused Shia LaBeouf of relentless physical, emotional, and psychological abuse, sexual battery, and knowingly transmitting an STI to her.

The lawsuit turned a relationship that had largely stayed out of the tabloids into a landmark legal case, one that raised uncomfortable questions about how easily abusive behavior can hide behind a relationship that looked, from the outside, like just another celebrity pairing.

Gigi Hadid, Zayn Malik, and the Fallout with Yolanda

Gigi Hadid and Zayn Malik’s on-and-off relationship finally ended for good in late 2021, and not quietly. An altercation involving Hadid’s mother, Yolanda Hadid, led to Malik pleading no contest to harassment charges — a resolution that closed the legal side of the incident but left the split as the most talked-about breakup of the year in that corner of the industry.

It’s the kind of ending that fits right alongside other relationship blowups readers have tracked for years, including the pattern-spotting in Inside Megan Fox’s Relationship History, where public affection didn’t always line up with what was happening behind closed doors.

Jennifer Aniston’s Long Run of Rocky Splits

Jennifer Aniston’s dating history has drawn media scrutiny for decades, and not because she’s been the problem. Her relationships with John Mayer and Brad Pitt both ended amid reported infidelity and messy, highly publicized fallout, feeding a media narrative around Aniston that painted her as perpetually unlucky in love rather than examining what her partners actually did.

That framing — sympathetic star, difficult partner — is exactly the pattern Nicki Swift’s rundown keeps returning to across every name on the list.

FKA twigs’ case against LaBeouf was still working through the legal system as of late 2021, with no resolution yet reported — which means the story Nicki Swift is telling here isn’t done being written.