For Natalie Portman and Others, One Film Can Mean Major Success and Real-Life Love

Listening to Oscar frontrunner Natalie Portman's best actress acceptance speech at the Golden Globe Awards, it became all too clear that the glowing starlet got a lot more out of the 'Black Swan' experience than just a hit film. In 'Swan,' Portman found not only the role of a lifetime, she also met the man who would become her fiance and father her child, French ballet dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied.

While the actress certainly isn't the first Hollywood star to start a relationship on-set -- doesn't it seem like most actors find love (or something like it) while filming? -- Portman can lay claim to being one of the few experiencing the best of both worlds: Not only is her film a career-defining smash, earning her the best reviews of her 16-year film career, her relationship with Millepied looks like the real deal.

Only a handful of other stars can point to one film as a game-changer the way Portman can. Find out who else fell in love (and stayed that way) on the set of a career-defining film, after the jump.

"Thank you to Benjamin, who is helping me continue this creation of creating more life. Benjamin choreographed the film, and also you might remember him in the movie as the guy when they ask, 'Would you sleep with that girl?' and he's like, 'Pfft, no.' He's the best actor; it's not true, he totally wants to sleep with me," Portman laughed during her acceptance speech. Millepied could not have looked more proud and smitten.

To date, 'Black Swan' has made $75 million at the box office. With awards season just getting into full swing, the indie hit, which cost only $13 million to make, seems en route to a gross of more than $100 million and is already Portman's biggest hit (you know, that doesn't start with the words 'Star Wars'). With multiple award wins already under her belt, the actress seems a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination and already has been pegged as the frontrunner to take home this year's Best Actress Oscar. Millepied will no doubt be by her side throughout, beaming as his Swan Queen sweeps through Tinseltown's biggest honors.

Portman and Millepied, however, are still decades removed from the gold standard of on-set Hollywood romances: Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Newman and Woodward met initially while working on the Broadway play 'Picnic' in 1953, while Newman was still married to his first wife, Jackie Witte. It wasn't until they reunited on the set of 'The Long, Hot Summer' in 1957, before either had broken out, that their romance flourished. The pair wed in 1958 and had been married for more than 50 years when Newman passed away in the fall of 2008.

'The Long, Hot Summer' was Newman's first major starring vehicle after nearly a decade of smaller parts, lesser films and TV work. Like her future husband, Woodward was a relative newcomer on the film scene -- though her star really took off while she was filming 'Summer' in '57, when 'The Three Faces of Eve,' for which she won the Best Actress Oscar, was released.

Newman and Woodward went on to have three daughters together and starred opposite each other in 10 different films, including 1990's 'Mr. & Mrs. Bridge,' for which Woodward earned her fourth Academy Award nod. Newman even directed Woodward to an Oscar nomination for 1968's 'Rachel, Rachel.'

'Summer's' success was just the beginning for Newman, whose career exploded following its release. That same year, he starred opposite Elizabeth Taylor in the classic film adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,' which brought him the first of eight Best Actor Oscar nominations. (He earned a best supporting actor nod for 2003's 'The Road to Perdition.') In the decade that followed, he starred in 'The Hustler,' 'Hud' and 'Cool Hand Luke.'

Woodward remained a constant in the actor's life, and when asked about infidelity in Hollywood, the philanthropic star famously quipped, "Why go out for hamburger when you have steak at home?"

If Newman was famous for being faithful, one of his contemporaries, Warren Beatty, was, um, not. From the time he became a movie star, in 1961's 'Splendor in the Grass,' Beatty was a notorious ladies man. For 30 years, the handsome actor romanced some of the most famous women in the world, from Madonna and Diane Keaton to Cher and Ann-Margret. It has even been speculated that Carly Simon's classic song 'You're So Vain' is about Beatty.

But not even the world's most notorious lothario can resist Cupid's arrow when the right lady comes along, and there's little doubt that Beatty now looks back on his 1991 hit 'Bugsy' as far more than the film that last brought him an Oscar nomination as an actor -- it's where he met the mother of his four children, Annette Bening. Beatty has starred in only three films since 'Bugsy's' release nearly 20 years ago, but he's stood steadfastly at Bening's side and watched her career flourish. In the year's since 'Bugsy,' Bening's jumped from one acclaimed movie ('The American President,' 'The Seige') to the next ('American Beauty,' 'Being Julia') and is presently Portman's biggest competition for this year's Best Actress Oscar for her Golden Globe-winning turn in 'The Kids Are All Right.'

Not long after her film wrapped, Bening, like Portman, found herself pregnant with she and Beatty's first child, and the pair married in March of 1992. "After years of running around and having a good time, I began to realize with some embarrassment that in most ways my movies all seem to return to one fairly unoriginal recurring theme: 'Love conquers all,'" Beatty told the Express of Bening in 2007. "I don't know if it's true, but it seems to be true for me."

'Bugsy' was a late career high point for Beatty the actor, but meeting Bening on-set was a revelation for Beatty the man, whose wild ways appear tamed. "She [Annette] has a great capacity to be happy, which is a great gift to me and an even greater gift to her children," Beatty told The Independent. "For me, the highest level of sexual excitement is in a monogamous relationship. I would hate myself if I failed to live up to it."

And, of course, if we are talking about couples meeting on the set of a career-defining (or redefining) movie, we can't forget Hollywood's golden couple, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. While 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith' was by no means a breakout film for either actor, it was, in many ways, a return to form for both, and its success essentially set the stage for Jolie's career in recent years. (Don't pretend you didn't notice she's played a spy in a few different movies recently.) Before 'Smith,' Jolie was in a bit of a career drought, having gone four years without a true hit. Pitt wasn't doing a whole lot better; sure, he had the 'Ocean's' franchise, but 'Troy' was a big budget bust, and his other star vehicles weren't delivering box office numbers fitting his stature in Hollywood.

Then came 'Smith,' which grossed a massive $478 million worldwide -- the film is the biggest hit of both actors' careers -- and introduced the world to Brangelina. Ever since the tabloids caught wind of their romance and its curious-seeming overlap with the end of Pitt's marriage to Jennifer Aniston, the pair have been caught in a perpetual whirlwind of drama, but Pitt and Jolie forged what seems like an unshakable bond, one that has weathered controversy after manufactured controversy. And they have six beautiful children to show for it.

"Not a lot of people get to see a movie where their parents fell in love," Jolie told the New York Times in 2008 of one day showing 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith' to her children. It is indeed a rare luxury, one she and Pitt share with Bening and Beatty and Portman and Millepied. Now, let's just hope Portman and Millepied can keep 'Black Swan' under wraps until their baby is old enough to understand just how much work mommy and daddy put in to making the film a tour de force of acting and dance.