Cheating scandals involving celebrities and their kids’ nannies have become their own uneasy corner of pop culture — part cliché, part cautionary tale, and almost always heartbreaking for the families caught in the middle. Still, the stories keep coming. Over the years, more than a few headline-making relationships have unraveled after allegations that a trusted caregiver got pulled into something far more complicated.
Ben Affleck, Jude Law, and Gavin Rossdale each dealt with nanny rumors at different points in their careers, and they’re hardly the first. Mick Jagger was hit with similar speculation in the ’80s. Christie Brinkley’s split from Peter Cook — who admitted to an affair with a 19-year-old babysitter — is another example of how quickly a private cheating scandal can turn into a very public mess.
A handful of celebrities have addressed the cheating accusations head-on, while others denied everything or stayed quiet until the dust settled. What’s clear is that nanny-related cheating scandals never fully fade — they always find their way back into the conversation.
Here are 15 celebrities who have been accused of cheating with their nanny or babysitter.
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Peter Cook
Image Credit: Chris Weeks/Liason vis Getty Images Christie Brinkley’s 2008 divorce from Peter Cook went public after Cook admitted he’d been having an affair with the couple’s 19-year-old babysitter.The revelation later expanded into reports of involvement with multiple teenage girls, fueling a messy split and a 2009 post-divorce dispute in which the exes accused each other of violating their settlement before reaching a brief truce in court.
In her 2025 memoir Uptown Girl, Brinkley wrote about the moment she learned the truth in 2006. After giving a commencement speech, she says a man pulled her aside and told her, “That arrogant husband of yours has been having an affair with my teenage daughter, and he won’t knock it off.” Brinkley recalls freezing, adding, “I knew from Peter’s face that he was guilty… I also felt tears began to well in my eyes.”
Years later, Brinkley spoke publicly about the divorce, saying Cook tried to “ruin her” through what she described as character attacks. Cook pushed back during a 2012 Today appearance, insisting she was misrepresenting their dynamic. “The entire content of her interview was a lie,” he said, adding, “This perception that I am harassing and bullying her is nonsense.”
Nearly two decades later, the two remain estranged. Brinkley revisited the marriage in her 2025 memoir, while Cook has since remarried and settled in the Hamptons with his current wife, Alba Jancou, who is 40 years his junior.
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Ben Affleck
Image Credit: Jim Spellman/WireImage via Getty Images Right after news of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner’s split came out in 2015, Affleck’s rumored dalliances with nanny Christine Ouzounian blew up. Sources alleged that Affleck and Ouzounian began an affair several months before Garner and Affleck’s separation was announced.
Sources close to Affleck denounced the claims as “complete garbage and full of lies.” A source told People that Affleck and Ouzounian had “a work relationship and a friendship. There has never been a romantic or sexual relationship.”
In a 2016 interview with Vanity Fair, Garner addressed the rumor saying, “We had been separated for months before I ever heard about the nanny. She had nothing to with our decision to divorce. She was not a part of the equation.”
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Joe Giudice
Image Credit: Derek Storm/Everett Collection Teresa and Joe Giudice’s marriage was riddled with cheating rumors since the early days of the Real Housewives of New Jersey but in 2013, rumors that Joe cheated with the couple’s nanny reached an all-time high.
Life & Style reported that Joe had an affair with the woman hired to care for the couple’s two daughters, leaving Teresa devastated.
Even after the couple’s 2020 divorce, Joe consistently denies. “And I still ask him ’til today, I’m like, ‘Just tell me f—cker,’” Teresa said on the Reality with The King podcast in July 2024. “And he doesn’t tell me.”
“He still denies ’til today. Do I believe him? No. I don’t believe him. I’m like, ‘Just admit it, we’re divorced now.’ I’m f—king somebody else,” she added.
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Stephen Belafonte
Image Credit: Michael Buckner/Variety/Penske Media via Getty Images In 2017, former Spice Girl Melanie Brown, aka Mel B, filed a restraining order against then-husband Stephen Belafonte claiming he abused and exploited her throughout their relationship.
In the filing, Brown alleged that Belafonte impregnated the couple’s nanny before allegedly forcing her to get an abortion. The nanny, Loraine Gilles, later filed a defamation lawsuit against Brown, claiming the singer pressured her into a sexual relationship with both her and Belafonte. The lawsuit was allegedly settled out of court.
As of 2021, Belafonte and Gilles appear to still have a relationship as Daily Mail photographed the former nanny on a FaceTime call with Belafonte. In 2024, Belafonte filed his own defamation lawsuit against Mel B.
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Joe Piscopo
Image Credit: Photo By: Rob Rich/Everett Collection. In 1988, SNL alum Joe Piscopo ended his marriage with first wife Nancy Jones and moved on with Kimberly Driscoll, who was his son’s babysitter.
Driscoll and Piscopo went on to have three children but separated in 2006. He later had an on-off relationship with his assistant, per Page Six.
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Jude Law
Image Credit: Steve Eichner/WWD/Penske Media via Getty Images In 2005, British golden couple Jude Law and Sienna Miller ended their year-long engagement when nanny Daisy Wright publicly detailed her affair with Law.
Wright, who nannied Law’s three children with ex-wife Sadie Frost, came forward in the Sunday Mirror to claim that she had a fling with the actor and was even caught in bed with him by his children. “Jude was a masterful lover who made my whole body tingle,” she said of the affair.
Law issued a public apology at the time, admitting to the affair.
“Following the reports in today’s papers, I just want to say I am deeply ashamed and upset that I’ve hurt Sienna and the people most close to us,” he said. “I want to publicly apologise to Sienna and our respective families for the pain that I have caused.”
But that didn’t end his and Miller’s relationship for good — at least not right away. They were rumored to be engaged yet again in 2010 but split again in 2011.
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Gavin Rossdale
Image Credit: Steve Eichner/WWD/Penske Media via Getty Images Reportedly, Gavin Rossdale’s alleged longtime affair with nanny Mindy Mann led to his divorce from Gwen Stefani in 2015.
Neither Rossdale nor Stefani have ever addressed the affair but sources told Us Weekly that the romance lasted three years and happened “right under Gwen’s nose.”
The alleged affair was reportedly discovered when explicit photos were found on one of the family’s iPads.
“The iPad was linked to Gavin’s phone,” a family source tells Us. “One of the other nannies discovered the exchange and told Gwen.”
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The-Dream
Image Credit: Johnny Nunez/WireImage via Getty Images The-Dream’s marriage to Christina Milian lasted just five months due to his affair with his personal assistant. The-Dream filed for divorce just days before Milian gave birth to their daughter and, months later, photos surfaced of him being intimate with his assistant during the couple’s marriage.
“I take full responsibility for misleading everyone into thinking everything was fine and OK when we knew problems existed for awhile!” Nash wrote on his website at the time.
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Ethan Hawke
Image Credit: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc via Getty Images Ethan Hawke married Ryan Shawhughes in 2008, who previously had been the nanny for his and Uma Thurman’s two kids. However, the Dead Poet’s Society actor insists there was no infidelity during his seven-year marriage to Thurman, despite the many rumors that follow their marriage.
“I met Ryan through my literary agent, and she was indeed one of Maya and Levon’s nannies during a film shoot,” he told The Guardian in 2009. “After a short period of working for me, Ryan went back to Columbia to get her degree. There were never any scandalous thoughts or actions back then. In the years that followed, my marriage disintegrated due to many pressures, none of which were remotely connected to Ryan.”
After his 2005 divorce from Thurman, he says he reconnected with Shawhughes. “I know people imagine some kind of Sound of Music type love affair, but the truth is by the time Ryan and I were falling in love, it had been a long while since I had employed her,” he said.
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Jon Gosselin
Image Credit: Amy Sussman/WireImage for Discovery Communications via Getty Images Reality stars Jon and Kate Gosselins tumultuous 2009 separation was made all the more complicated when the couple’s nanny, Stephanie Santoro, claimed she slept with Jon during her one month employment with the family.
“We would lie in bed and talk about the future. He would say how he wanted to make sure my daughter and I would always be OK, and how he would take care of me. There was no talk about marriage, but we did talk about being together,” she told InTouch.
This was one of several cheating allegations in the lead up to the couple’s divorce.
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Tarek El Moussa
Image Credit: Priscilla Grant/Everett Collection. Tarek El Moussa was accused of having an affair with his nanny after his 2016 split from ex-wife Christina Haack but it seems there was no infidelity at play.
Reports about his relationship with his nanny surfaced after the couple announced in Dec. 2016 that they had been separated since May.
“Yes, he dated a nanny,” a source told People after affair rumors surfaced. “To be clear this was someone he hired to help when he had the kids after the separation. This was not the nanny they’ve had for years.”
“Christina feels awful that people think it’s her nanny,” the source added.
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
Image Credit: Donato Sardella/WWD/Penske Media via Getty Images The former Governor of California had an affair with his family’s housekeeper Mildred Baena that led to him fathering a son, Joseph, in 1997.
Baena raised Joseph as her own but, as he got older, Schwarzenegger began to notice their similarities, eventually confirming with Baena that the boy was his.
It would take several more years for him to admit the affair to Shriver who eventually confronted him in couple’s therapy.
“She was crushed because of that. I had an affair in ’96. In the beginning I really didn’t know,” Schwarzenegger recalled in his 2023 Netflix documentary, Arnold. “I just started feeling the older he got the more it became clear to me and then it was really just a matter of how do you keep this quiet? How do you keep this a secret?”
He and Shriver ended their marriage in 2011.
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Mick Jagger
Image Credit: Robert Mitra/WWD/Penske Media via Getty Images Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall’s marriage was rumored to be plagued by Jagger’s wild affairs, including with Claire Houseman, a nanny hired to tag along on a Rolling Stones tour to care for the couple’s four children.
Hall and Jagger were together from 1977 until 1999.
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Craig Schelske
Image Credit: Mullen/WireImage via Getty Images Country music star Sara Evans accused Craig Schelske of cheating with their nanny in her 2005 divorce filing. The nanny later denied it and bit back with a $3 million lawsuit.
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Robin Williams
Image Credit: Vera Anderson/WireImage via Getty Images When Robin Williams and wife of 10 years Valerie Velardi split in 1988, it was rumored to be caused by his affair with their son’s nanny, Marsha Garces.
However, Velardi stated in the 2018 documentary, Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind, that the relationship with Garces began after she and Williams had already “drifted apart.”
Garces and Williams married in April 1989, three months before their first daughter was born. Williams and Garces were married for 19 years and welcomed two more kids together.
