Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, 2007
The Baldwin-Basinger split didn't seem too bad at first: when the couple filed for divorce in 2001 after eight years of marriage, citing irreconcilable differences, friends said the split was "amicable." That proved overly optimistic after Baldwin was caught on tape in 2007 calling the couple's 11-year-old daughter, Ireland, a "rude, thoughtless little pig." Baldwin (who later apologized) blamed the leak on Basinger, with whom he was locked in a heated custody battle. His spokesman issued a statement saying that "everyone who knows him privately knows what he has been put through for the past six years." By 2008, so did the rest of America: in his book A Promise to Ourselves, Baldwin slams the family-court system and his ex-wife, whom he accuses of doing everything she could to twist his relationship with their daughter.