Musk met then 22-year-old British actor Talulah Riley in July 2008, just a few weeks after he and Justine decided to divorce, at a London nightclub. Riley told Daily Mail in a 2009 profile that their meeting was “serendipitous.”
“It wasn’t love at first sight for me, but within three days I knew I loved him, and we’ll marry next year,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to marry young, and the age difference just isn’t an issue.”
According to Isaacson’s book, Musk proposed within weeks—though the couple decided they should wait a “couple of years” before getting married. The relationship soon became a hot topic in the tabloids, prompting Musk to write an op-ed denying he had cheated on Justine with Riley, saying they met after he split from his wife.
Riley told Isaacson that she soon learned more about Musk’s hot temper and trauma, and that he told her “being with me can be difficult, this will be a hard path.” She stuck by him, and they got married at an English cathedral in September 2010. However, Isaacson wrote, she was suitably worried about their relationship to decide she didn’t want kids with him.
Soon, the marriage began to fall apart. Isaacson wrote that Riley felt isolated by living in Los Angeles with Musk and that she had given up her own career, while he frequently abandoned her for his. She filed for divorce in 2012, but as the author wrote, the couple started kissing in court during the proceedings.
“They went through with the divorce, but she ended up moving back in with him,” he wrote.
Musk and Riley remarried in 2013 in their dining room, but the reconciliation was short-lived, Issacson wrote. Riley began to feel frustrated by the same problems she had before, and when she turned 30, decided to call it and go home to England. They divorced again in 2016, and Riley eventually married fellow actor Thomas Brodie-Sangster in 2024. The couple was featured that year in a profile for UK newspaper The Times, in which they discussed living on a farm commune (“I’m mad for raw milk,” Riley said).
According to Isaacson, though, Riley told Musk she’d always be there for him, saying: “You’re my Mr. Rochester…And if Thornfield Hall burns down and you are blind, I’ll come to you and take care of you.”
Amber Heard: 2016–2017, no children
Before actor Amber Heard was tried in the court of public opinion over her relationship with ex-husband Johnny Depp, she had a brief and tumultuous relationship with Musk. Both were fresh off recent divorces (Heard from Depp and Musk from Riley).
According to Isaacson, the couple, who had briefly met before, reconnected as both were splitting up with their exes at the 2016 Met Gala. They embarked on a bumpy relationship that lasted less than two years, but it left lasting impacts on Musk.
“The most agonizing [relationship] of them all was with the actress Amber Heard, who drew him into a dark vortex that lasted more than a year and produced a deep-seated pain that lingers to this day,” he wrote. The couple, he reported, would argue all night and Musk would be unable to get up in the morning. Their flame eventually fizzled for good, though Heard told Isaacson she loved Musk.
