The most star-crossed cinematic lovers of all-time

Jack and Ennis are cowboys who meet and fall in love, but they’re too afraid of their feelings – and scared of the violent homophobia in society – to actually share a life together. Instead, they only meet for infrequent camping trips while their relationships with the women in their lives disintegrate. Eventually Jack dies and Ennis is heartbroken, left with only their two shirts in his closet.

For two years and seven different hair colors, Joel and Clementine, but the breakup is so painful that Clementine pays to have her memories of him erased. When Joel finds out, he does the same thing. Their subconscious might try to resist the machinations of Elijah Wood and Lacuna, Inc., but they’re ultimately left with no memory of each other except an inexplicable desire to visit Montauk. When they find out the truth, will they start again with a clean, spotless slate?

In "An Affair To Remember," Nickie Ferrante and Terry McKay fall in love on transatlantic ocean liner, but they've got some roadblocks. First, they're both dating other people, and they hate their jobs. They make a mutual "dumb those losers" pact and promise to meet at the top of the Empire State Building, inspiring Meg Ryan to do the same later. He goes there; she gets hit by a car outside and put in a wheelchair. A series of misunderstandings puts their relationship on its last legs, until they're finally reunited by the magic of art sales.

Plenty of things should keep Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt-Bukater apart – their class difference, her suıcide attempts, a gun-wielding Billy Zane – but they still manage to get together. They dance and drink with poor people, they make out in a luxury car and Jack sketches her in her birthday suit. They even make it off the doomed Titanic without a lifeboat, but Rose survives the ice-cold Atlantic Ocean. If only the doors were wider so they could have both floated away.  

In a shockingly similar plotline to "Romeo and Juliet," Tony falls in love with a Puerto Rican girl named Maria. She’s betrothed to Chino, leader of the Sharks street gang, and he founded their rival gang, the Jets. Even though most of their fighting consists of snapping their fingers and tap-dancing, Tony nonetheless stabs her brother to death to avenge his dead friend. Maria is somehow still into him after this, but it’s all for naught when Chino shoots him dead. Where were you, Officer Krupke?

In "The English Patient," Almásy and the married Katherine Clifton have a passionate affair inspired by their shared love of aviation, cartography, and adultery, but there's a lot of impediments. The start of World War II is one, the brutality of the Sahara Desert is another, but the most dangerous one is her murderously jealous husband, who tries to murder-suıcide them with his plane. Even betraying his allies to the Germans isn't enough to save her, or keep him from burning alive in a plane crash. But that's the danger of white-hot passion.

Jamal and Latika meet in the slums of Mumbai when he lets her into his shelter with his brother. They both go through a tremendous amount of struggle – she becomes a beggar, then gets trained to be a child prostıtute, then ends up captive to an abusive crime lord. Meanwhile, Jamal begs, picks pockets, steals shoes at the Taj Mahal, and eventually becomes a chaiwala at a call center. Through a stellar performance on the Indian version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire,” Jamal wins her heart and she escapes the crime lord – although she is absolutely worthless as his Phone-a-Friend.

Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara have great passion for one another, but a myriad of factors keep them apart. For one, he’s constantly fighting the Civil War – a war that doesn’t end well for Georgia. For another, she’s pining for Ashley Wilkes, who’s married to her best friend and sister-in-law. Scarlett keeps marrying men she doesn’t love, and when they do eventually marry, it turns ugly with infidelity, miscarriages, and their child’s death in an equestrian accident. When finally Scarlett realizes she truly loves him, he no longer gives a damn.

Landon is a popular and rebellious teenager, while Jamie is a plain-Jane minister’s daughter. Who has leukemia. When the school forces him to act in the school play to avoid expulsion, he falls for Jamie and her secret cancer. They date, he gets his life on track, and when she’s very sick, he builds her a telescope to view a once-in-a-lifetime comet. Once in anyone’s lifetime, that is. They get married just before she dies, Landon becomes a doctor, and millions of teenagers across America weep uncontrollably.

In 1900 Paris, Satine is an actress, Christian is a writer, and they’re bound together by love and anachronistic musical numbers. The producer of the show will only finance the show if he has Satine for himself. Because this takes place in France, there are farcical misunderstandings, a murder attempt, and finally, death from tuberculosis.  

Helen Mirren has a terrible, thieving gangster of a husband, but finds love with a bookseller who frequents her husband’s restaurant. The restaurant staff helps them conduct their clandestine romance, but the husband finds out, and tortures the lover to death by feeding him page after page of books from his shop. As these things invariably do, the whole affair ends in cannibalism and bullets.

Sam and Molly have a love that transcends death, in the only movie that’s ever made pottery sexy. She says “I love you”; he only says “Ditto,” even when he’s talking to her from the afterlife. Through the help of a ghost that wants him off his train, Sam solves his own murder, saves Molly’s life, and in a scene you don’t want to think about for too long, inhabits Whoopi Goldberg’s body to make out with Molly. 

Thanks to a magical Zoltar Speaks machine, 12-year-old Josh Baskin wakes up as a 30-year-old man. His childlike enthusiasm and ability to play “Heart And Soul” on a giant keyboard almost immediately land him a top-level executive job at a toy company and a gorgeous girlfriend. Josh and Susan take it slow, staying in bunk beds at their first sleepover, they eventually begin a passionate-and-almost-certainly-illegal office romance. Poor Susan has to deal with her boyfriend dumping her to go back to middle school.

There are star-crossed lovers, and then there’s one-of-us-is-the-personification-of-death-crossed lovers. Death AKA “Joe Black” spares an old man’s life so he can learn about life, but then he starts sleeping with the old man’s daughter, Susan. He also inhabits the body of a guy who met once at a coffee shop who was subsequently hit by many, many cars. Eventually the old man accepts his death, and Susan gets her reanimated coffee shop crush back, and Joe Black pretends to be something scarier than Death: An IRS agent.

Two lonely next-door neighbors in 1962 Hong Kong, Chow, and Su eventually meet when they realize their spouses are having an affair. They fall in love but refuse to stoop to the level of their partners by consummating it. There’s a series of near-misses at hotels and a Singapore apartment, and they’re both left holding their secrets forever. 

Viola de Lesseps is engaged to a nobleman, William Shakespeare is still married, and they both spend a lot of time cross-dressing in the pursuit of art. Nevertheless, they’re united by their passion and love of the theater. There are murders, indecency charges, and Queen Elizabeth has to show up to sort everything out, send Viola to America, and collect an Oscar. It’s very affecting, though some literary experts will claim the movie should really be “Christopher Marlowe In Love.”

Tracy is a secretary who becomes a high-fashion model. Brian is a community organizer. They fall for each other thanks to her getting soaked in beer and him getting soaked in milk. Along the way she goes to Europe and winds up with an ill-suited Anthony Perkins, but eventually sees her wealthy, empty life in Rome is no match for wearing amazing fur coats with Billy Dee Williams in Chicago.

Bella Swan is untroubled by her boyfriend’s blood-drinking and undead skin that glitters like a diamond, though you’d think she’d at least worry about why such an old dude keeps hanging out with girls. Despite the relationship leading to vampire wars, near-fatal pregnancies, and a werewolf falling in love with a newborn baby (yes, really!), they stay together. Unless that was just a dream, too!

United in their love of firearms, black leather clothing, and sunglasses, Neo and Trinity spent the majority of the Matrix trilogy saving one another from death. Trinity kisses Neo as he comes back to life in the first movie, while Neo literally restarts her heart in the sequel. Along the way, robots, clones, Merovingians, and evil Joe Pantoliano try to keep them apart. Trinity dies tragically in the third movie, either from crashing onto a robot planet or because her brain exploded trying to keep track of the plot.

Theodore is divorced and has trouble having relationships with women, so he starts dating his computer’s operating system, Samantha, who has access to all the world’s information and the voice of Scarlett Johannson. For a time it’s perfect – they sing, they make love, and you aren’t ignoring your girlfriend by spending time on the internet when your girlfriend is the internet. But later, like most human women, she surpasses him, talking to thousands of other people and falling in love with hundreds of them. Samantha leaves him, not the first nor last tech guy to get burned by the unintended consequences of polyamory.

Monica and Quincy are two star athletes brought together and driven apart by the game of basketball. While it’s their common bond, it also leads to jealousy and often, geographical distance. Who knows what it would have been like if the WNBA had existed when Monica was younger, but injuries, international ball, and Tyra Banks all conspire to keep them apart, until it all comes down to a single game of one-on-one.

Longtime companions for years on a romantic tropical isle, Chuck and Wilson were separated for good after a tragic boating accident.

Carol is an older mom going through a divorce. Therese is a young photographer trying to find herself. There are boyfriends, jobs, and private investigators held at gunpoint, but the main thing keeping these women apart is that it’s 1952. Coming out of the closet can cost you a job, custody of your child, and force you into therapy – but dating Cate Blanchett just might be worth it.