Charlize Theron, Sean Penn Split: Did Their Collaboration On New Film Doom Their Love?

Despite gushing over each other in interviews and cozying up glamorously on red carpets, Hollywood’s strangest power couple have split and called off their engagement. That’s right: Charlize Theron and Sean Penn are no more.

Celebrity watchers are shocked, seeing as Theron and Penn seemed to be taking their pairing very seriously. He was getting ready to adopt her son, Jackson, and they were planning a wedding in South Africa, Radar Online.

But according to People, all that intimacy dissipated in recent weeks. They haven’t been seen together since looking fabulous at the Cannes Film Festival. He returned to his Malibu mansion — once for sale, and now not so much — to be alone. She remained at her Hollywood home with her son. Adoption proceedings have stalled.

So what happened? Plenty of people are reading the tea leaves, trying to discern from snippets of interviews with both actors over the course of their year-and-a-half romance the reason behind the sudden split.

Thankfully for the snoopy, insiders are leaking some details about what sunk the Penn/Theron union, and it may have something to do with his being a “notorious flirt,” which she didn’t like.

Then there are some hints about her fairly lukewarm feelings about marriage. According to Vanity Fair, in a couple interviews since 2014, Theron seemed particularly uninterested in walking down the aisle and hinted that she found nuptials strange and later, that weddings looked too difficult.

Then there’s this nugget: they recently worked on film The Last Face together in South Africa, her starring and him directing. And that may have spelled the end, a source told Radar.

“Working together on the project definitely took a toll on the relationship. Everyone knows how intense Sean is, and there is no exception on movie sets. Charlize felt he was overly critical of her at times. Separating work and personal became hard, and the lines were definitely blurred.”

And then the actress made this comment in Elle Magazine, the Daily Beast noted — no one really knows what she was referring to, but the speculation has begun.

“Putting aside that he’s my partner, he’s the love of my life; for the first time, I felt that my work was really bleeding into my life and that made it hard. There were moments where I was incredibly unfair to him. And moments where I felt like … he was incredibly unfair to me. But it makes you realize that no matter how complicated it gets, the priority is the relationship.”

Celebrity watchers believe that something dramatic had to happen for these two to split, given that Charlize called him the love of her life, and Sean said she made him happy — finally.

And according to this knowledgeable insider, the actor doesn’t want the split to stick.

“(Penn) is eager to get back in (her) good graces, and isn’t ready to call it quits on the relationship. There is a lot of love there, and Sean has told Charlize he is willing to work on his issues.”

[Photos Courtesy Clemens Bilan, Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images]