- Michael Weatherly and Jessica Alba were co-stars on Dark Angel
- They started dating and got engaged in the early 2000s
- After the relationship, Alba talked about the noticeable age gap
It's sometimes forgotten, but actors Michael Weatherly and Jessica Alba were once an item and even got engaged in the early 2000s.
It's a fun factoid, but the relationship was also somewhat controversial. Here's a look back at their time together, and what Jessica Alba has said about it since.
Revisiting Jessica Alba and Michael Weatherly's relationship
It all began when Weatherly and Alba joined the cast of the TV series Dark Angel in 2000. Off-screen, they got together almost immediately.
The co-stars had a 13-year age gap, and Alba was only 18 when they started dating. Weatherly, then 32, proposed on her 20th birthday. She said yes.
However, they would call it off and go their separate ways in 2003. Both soon became big stars, with Weatherly on NCIS and Alba in Fantastic Four and more.
But Alba has been candid about the relationship – and noticeable age difference – on several occasions since. Her unflattering comments also resurfaced after Weatherly's recent sexual harassment scandal...
"I don't know [why I got engaged]," she later said, noting that her parents also disapproved of the decision.
"I was a virgin. He was 12 years older than me. I thought he knew better," she added of Michael Weatherly.
"I thought he knew better": Jessica Alba on Michael Weatherly
Speaking to Cosmopolitan, Alba further revealed that she's been in just two relationships in her life. She recalled of the first, with Weatherly:
"I've only had two boyfriends. In the first one, with Michael [Weatherly], I didn't have a voice yet, and he was so much older... I was so young, 18, when I started dating him."
Alba went on to explain why the relationship with Weatherly was important to her, but also how it went so wrong...
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"I was a virgin," Alba said. "I knew I wanted to be in love with the first person I slept with. I wanted to be careful that he was going to be in love with me, and wasn't just going to leave me."
But things didn't work out. Alba added that it is "really difficult to have the same occupation as the person you're with–especially when you're both actors."
So it seems a combination of age-related and professional issues led to their break-up. Alba was later married in 2008, while Weatherly married Bojana Jankovic in 2009.
See more in the video above.
