Elisabeth Shue And Davis Guggenheim's 29-Year Marriage Started After A Tragedy

Jan 10, 2023

Elisabeth Shue has made a mark in Hollywood for her movies like "The Karate Kid," "Adventures in Babysitting" and "Leaving Las Vegas," where she earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. However, her bright and shining status as a movie star is not her finest achievement. Instead, it's her long-enduring marriage to her director-husband Davis Guggenheim, the award-winning director of "An Inconvenient Truth," that makes Shue one of the most admirable and remarkable personalities of Tinseltown.

Shue was Hollywood's favorite "girl next door" when she met Guggenheim in the late 1980s. According to The Globe and Mail, the two met at a bowling party organized by her Hollywood agency, and it was love at first sight. 

When their relationship began, Shue was still mourning the tragic death of her brother, William, then 26 years old, from a freak accident during a family holiday. The actress, two years younger than her brother, regarded William as a surrogate parent after their parents divorced. 

In an interview with Los Angeles Times, Guggenheim recalled that Shue was "in a fog" for almost a year because of that loss. Shue also said that Will's death made her see the fragility of humans, but this taught her not to be afraid of realizing her potential.

Six years later, Shue and Guggenheim got married and built a family by raising three children: Miles William, Stella Street and Agnes Charles. Throughout their marriage, Shue said that her husband was the one person who challenged and encouraged her to grow both as an actor and a person. 

By the time Shue and Guggenheim became parents of three kids, the actress decided to put her family as her priority over acting. She did not quit the movies, but she became less high-profile. She also pursued an interest in tennis, playing two hours a day and attending all kinds of tennis tournaments. Shue also became the tennis adviser for the film, "Battle of the Sexes." 

On the other hand, her husband influenced her to go back to college and earn a bachelor's degree after she dropped out of Harvard in her late teens to become an actress. Guggenheim was working on a documentary about the American education system, and this piqued his wife's interest in being a student again. It took 13 years, but Shue graduated with a political science degree from Harvard in 2000.

When asked if Shue has any regrets about giving up her screen success, she turns to her husband's words to validate her choices. 

"My husband is great at reminding me that you make choices for a reason and you are in charge of your own life," Shue said in an interview with Hollywood.com in 2022.

The couple also worked on a passion project together. In 2007, Shue starred in the film "Gracie" with her husband as the director. The movie was based on the death of William. Shue's younger brother, Andrew, was also part of the project, where the central character was a girl modeled after the actress.

Shue said that the film is her husband's view on being part of her family, and working on the project became a "strange therapeutic experience" for her and her brother. 

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