1997, rapper/actor Will Smith married actress Jada Pinkett. The couple were titled a supercouple due to their combined film star allure and perceived physical attractiveness. In 2003 and 2008, People magazine categorized them as a supercouple due to their long marriage and widespread celebrity status. Smith spoke of the power of love as a connective force to Essence magazine. "The truth about life is that we're all alone," he said. "But when somebody loves you, that experience is shared. Love is the only real connective tissue that allows you to not live and die by yourself." Additionally, in 1997, Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche began dating and were described as "the world's first gay supercouple". Their relationship lasted three years. In 1998, Brad Pitt met Friends actress Jennifer Aniston, and married her in a private wedding ceremony in Malibu on July 29, 2000. They were titled a supercouple, regarded as one of the film industry's most powerful, and their marriage was considered a rare Hollywood success. In January 2005, Pitt and Aniston announced they decided to formally separate after seven years together. Two months later, Aniston filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. In November 2000, Michael Douglas married Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, and the pairing, 25 years apart in age, were considered a supercouple. Pairing Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez incited unprecedented media attention for an American modern-day supercouple during their 2002-2004 relationship. The two were referred to as the first superstar couple of the Internet age, and the pairing's popularity resulted in their being known by the portmanteau "Bennifer" (for Ben and Jennifer) to the media, as well as to fans using the name combination. The term Bennifer itself became popular and started the trend of other celebrity couples being referred to by the combination of each other's first names. The pairing eventually succumbed to overexposure, which caused public interest in their romance to result in less admiration and negatively affected their careers. In 2007, Affleck stated: [The romance] was probably bad for my career. What happens is this sort of bleed-over from the tabloids across your movie work. You go to a movie, you only go once. But the tabloids and Internet are everywhere. You can really subsume the public image of somebody. I ended up in an unfortunate crosshair position where I was in a relationship and [the media] mostly lied and inflated a bunch of salacious