The twice-Emmy-nominated Lizzy Caplan is known for her prolific work on big and small screens, debuting with the classic series Freaks and Geeks and going on to star in Mean Girls, Now You See Me 2, Masters of Sex, Party Down, Fleishman Is in Trouble and more.
Now, Caplan stars in Netflix’s political conspiracy thriller Zero Day, which premiered Feb. 20, opposite Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemmons, Angela Bassett, Connie Britton, Joan Allen and Matthew Modine, among others.
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What might not be as well known about the actress, who’s delivered some of pop culture’s most endlessly quotable lines, is her relationship with fellow industry colleague Tom Riley, whom she married in 2017.
Read on for more details about Caplan and her marriage to Tom Riley:
Lizzy Caplan is married to English actor, producer and director Tom Riley. The pair have known each other for over a decade and were married in 2017. What does Lizzy Caplan's husband Tom Riley do for work?
Hailing from Kent, England, Riley is an actor, producer and director. His credits include the eponymous lead role in Starz’s historical drama Da Vinci’s Demons, Netflix’s satire miniseries The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window with Kristen Bell and HBO’s period fantasy show The Nevers. Additional TV roles include BBC Two dramedy Ill Behavior, ITV’s crime series Dark Heart, Amazon U.K. original The Collection about the post-WWII fashion scene and ITV neurosurgeon procedural Monroe.
Riley’s foray into the theater began at the young age of four, and he spent his school years writing and directing plays. After graduating from the University of Birmingham with a dual degree in English literature and drama, during which he set up the small theater company Article 19 and hosted a radio show, he studied acting for three years at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. In 2019, he helmed the comedy short The Toll Road, which screened on the indie festival circuit.
He is currently filming for Apple TV+’s Down Cemetery Road.
Related: Watch the Riveting Trailer for the Netflix Drama 'Zero Day'—Robert De Niro's TV Debut
Lizzy Caplan and Tom RileyDave Benett/Getty Images
Riley and Caplan first became acquainted in 2015 while she was filming the WWII romantic drama film Allied with Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard. The two had been dating for a couple of months when Riley suffered a somewhat harrowing incident that has since become brilliant anecdote material for talk shows.
In 2018, he was prompted to retell the story on British daytime program This Morning: He had arrived outside of Caplan’s Los Angeles home and, deciding to freshen up with some Listerine mouthwash like a proper gent, accidentally got a face full of cactus.
“I gargled and I spat into the roadside, and in the shadows, unbeknownst to me, was a cactus. And as I spat, a needle went straight through my eyeball,” he recalled. “[I] carried on. There was a bright flash of white light, which you don’t want.”
He continued, saying he tried to “play it very cool” despite the fact that “my pupil had begun to leak, which I didn’t know was something that could happen. Turns out it is.” Since he was in the U.S., Riley had to brave the unwieldy American health care system, which led him to four operations at a whopping $5,000 each. In the end, however, he was fortunate, as the needle pierced the “tiny area of the eye I needed to not go blind, 2.5 millimeters [off] or something.”
“There is nothing that solidifies the beginning of a new relationship more than having to put an eyepatch on your new boyfriend’s face every night before he falls asleep so he doesn’t scratch it,” he concluded, laughing.
When did Lizzy Caplan and Tom Riley get married?
After dating for a year, the couple went public with their relationship at the Prague Opera Ball in February 2016, per People. They were engaged three months later, and in June, Caplan debuted her engagement ring at the premiere of Now You See Me 2.
A little over a year later, the duo tied the knot in Ravello, a resort town near Italy’s sweeping Amalfi Coast, over Labor Day weekend, on Sept. 2, 2017. Reportedly in attendance were fellow performers like Octavia Spencer, Lily Collins, Diana Agron, James Marsden, Chris Hemsworth and Dave Franco.
Both Caplan and Riley are extremely private and have forgone having social media accounts. In a 2016 interview with The Telegraph, Riley admitted he had no interest in that aspect of celebrity: “The idea of being a ‘power couple’ or in a relationship that is a ‘brand’ is just so unappealing to me,” he said.
Despite this, the two have been each other’s biggest fans at red carpets, showing up hand-in-hand at premieres for projects like Riley’s film Starfish (their carpet debut) and Caplan’s Allied, Castle Rock and Fleishman Is in Trouble, held at Carnegie Hall. They have also appeared side-by-side at tennis tournaments like the 2019 U.S. Open and even viewed Mean Girls on Broadway in 2018 (before which Riley watched the movie for the first time — he deemed it “wonderful” — with Caplan.)
Related: 'Mean Girls' Cast: Where Are They Now?
After four years of marriage, Caplan and Riley welcomed a baby boy named Alfie in late 2021. The actress recently appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to share that her 3-and-a-half-year-old is a stellar joke-teller and will soon be attending school in New York City following a recent move from L.A.
In 2022, Caplan opened up to Grazia Magazine about the joys of motherhood.
“There are moments where you’re just watching this little person do a thing and you’re just beaming at him and you don’t even realize you’re beaming until maybe you see a picture of yourself watching him do this thing and you realize, ‘Oh my, I’m smiling so much right now.’ I was smiling without being totally aware that I’m smiling — it’s like this unrivaled pure joy,” she gushed.
About Riley, whom she called the “father of the century,” she added, “We got a lot of life in before we had a kid, so we were both very ready to do this. And it’s just so much more mind-blowing and better than you could imagine before actually going through with it. That’s been our experience.”
Caplan concluded in the piece that Alfie is her “hobby,” adding that she has “no time” for anything else. But “motherhood’s good stuff. Highly recommend. 10 out of 10 would recommend,” she said.
In a 2023 conversation with People, Caplan added that her family is now the “most important” part of her life as opposed to her work. Around that time, she appeared on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen while promoting Fatal Attraction, revealing that the most romantic thing her husband had done for her was making a bound book out of talking with 150 people from her past for her 40th birthday. “He tracked down my high school boyfriend,” she recalled.
Lizzy Caplan’s previous relationship with Matthew Perry
Previously, Caplan was in a longterm relationship with the late Friends star Matthew Perry, whom she dated from 2006 to 2012. While Caplan hasn’t opened up about that era of her life, Perry went into great detail about a former partner whose description aligns with Caplan’s in his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.
The two met when he was 36 and she was 23, a fact he was certain of since he wrote that he had “crashed” her birthday party. After that first meeting, Perry detailed that the two embarked on a friends with benefits relationship before that transformed into deeper feelings of love. The couple didn’t discuss their relationship in public, but were spotted at various events together. At one point, he even seriously considered marriage. However, he said that his fears surrounding intimacy ultimately led him to forgo popping the question.
"I often think if I'd asked [her to marry me], now we'd have two kids and a house. Instead, I'm some schmuck who's alone in his house at fifty-three,” he wrote, per Yahoo Entertainment.
After they split in 2012, Perry invited her to his play in London, The End of Longing, which Caplan reportedly said she was too busy to attend, resulting in an email exchange that he deemed “harsh” in the memoir, per the New York Post. He concluded that they didn’t contact one another again, and wished her well.
Related: 'Now You See Me 3' Welcomes Back a Fan Favorite Cast Member Who Skipped the Sequel
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