Andre Agassi and former tennis legend Steffi Graf are a happy couple today. The duo often spend time together and are ‘couple goals’ in the tennis world. But such wasn’t always the case for Agassi.
The 8-time Grand Slam winner was once married to actress and child model Brooke Shields. They were a married couple for a few years, before splitting up. It became one of the most expensive settlements ever in celebrity history.
Andre Agassi’s divorce from Brooke Shields cost $130 million. It is famous for having one of the highest payouts per day in history. The payout was $8,450,715 per month. The duo was married for only two years from 1997-1999, and yet the high settlement value remained.
Brooke Shields has had a storied history in Hollywood. After becoming famous very early, the New York-born actress starred in movies like Blue Lagoon, Running Wild, The Disenchanted Forest, etc. She also made guest appearances in popular shows like The Simpsons and Friends.
The latter would have a major implication on her marriage with Agassi. As of 2024, Shields has a net worth of $40 million, courtesy of her years of work in the film and modeling industry.
Brooke Shields starred in the Friends episode ‘The One After the Superbowl: Part 1’. She played the role of a woman who falls in love with Joey Tribbiani aka Matt LeBlanc after watching him in the show daytime soap opera (within Friends) ‘Days of Our Lives’. The episode takes hilarious turns with Shields playing this silly, innocent girl, who couldn’t get over Joey and the Friends eventually have to get rid of her.
However, the episode has intimate scenes between Shields and LeBlanc on more than one occasion. It even gets steamy between them once. This is the part that enraged Andre Agassi.
Agassi wasn’t aware of Shields’ role in Friends and the extent of her commitment. The fits of rage turned into something ugly and the duo never really went back to being normal with each other again. While they divorced a few years after that, and there could’ve been other reasons for it, many sources cite this particular moment as the first crack in their relationship. Years later, this is what Brooke Shields had to say about that moment.
“Unpacking that. It really had just begun too. The irony of it too was that the extreme sort of behaviors were not dissimilar to what it was like living with an alcoholic, you know, and loving an alcoholic… I spent the next couple of years trying to get those trophies all replicated (Agassi had smashed his own trophies in fits of rage after that Friends incident). And the thought process was, ‘One day I want our kids to see their father’s, you know, achievements’… Clearly he wasn’t familiar with the acting world or having got threatened or whatever the justification I tried to had but it was so self-inflicted. That’s what I found really interesting,” said Brooke Shields to SiriusXM.
After their divorce, Agassi’s value was still $170 million, whereas Brooks’ was $20 million at the time. Agassi kept earning money in myriad ways. After Agassi, Shields was married to TV writer Chris Henchy and have two daughters together.
