Some grudges fade after a bad audition or a stolen role. Others follow people to the grave, and sometimes even past it. Hollywood has produced plenty of short-lived spats that dissolve after a press cycle, but a rare few rivalries have simmered for thirty, forty, even fifty years, outlasting marriages, careers, and in some cases the people involved. These three stand out not because they were loud, though they often were, but because they simply refused to end.
1. Bette Davis and Joan Crawford
The origin story sounds almost too small to matter. The commonly accepted origin of the feud begins in the gossip columns of 1933, when Bette Davis was on the cusp of her first major promotional campaign for her film Ex-Lady, only to have Joan Crawford steal the headlines by announcing her divorce from Douglas Fairbanks Jr. It was a minor slight, but Davis apparently never let it go.
Things only got worse from there. Over the course of their careers, many factors contributed to the -long feud, but it all started in the mid-1930s when they both liked the same man, Franchot Tone. Crawford won that round, and later Davis was still describing it with real bitterness, telling a journalist that “She took him from me. She did it coldly, deliberately and with complete ruthlessness. I have never forgiven her for that and never will.” Even a joint film couldn’t smooth things over. When they finally shared a screen in 1962’s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, tensions on set turned physical, and the rivalry never really cooled after that. It didn’t even end with death. The feud officially came to an end when Crawford passed away on May 10, 1977, from a heart attack, with Davis reportedly commenting afterward, “You should never say bad things about the dead, only good… Joan Crawford is dead Good.”
2. Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine
Unlike most Hollywood feuds, this one started before either woman ever set foot on a soundstage. Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine were born fifteen months apart and both found success as actresses in Hollywood’s Golden Age, but instead of bringing them together, their similarities exacerbated a rivalry that sprang up in childhood and lasted a lifetime. As children they fought constantly. Olivia once said, “Our biggest problem was that we had to share a room,” and though they occasionally played together, their clashes were frequent, featuring slaps from Joan and hair-pulling from Olivia.
The sisters even competed for the same statuette. The sisters were up for the same Best Actress Oscar in 1942 when Joan won out over Olivia, and afterward Olivia reportedly refused to congratulate her sister on the award. There was a brief thaw in the 1960s, when the sisters spent a Christmas together and were even photographed laughing at an event, but it didn’t last. Their mother’s death in 1975 killed the relationship for good. Award show organizers reportedly knew better than to seat them together, and one report notes that at an Oscar reunion in 1979, the two sisters were booked to sit far away from each other. By the time Fontaine died in 2013, the two hadn’t spoken meaningfully in years, and by the end, the sisters had spent estranged, with the reconciliation never coming.
3. Woody Allen and Mia Farrow
This is the rare Hollywood feud that isn’t confined to old black and white photographs. It began publicly in the early 1990s. Mia and Dylan Farrow have both accused Allen of sexually assaulting Dylan in 1992, when she was 7 years old, an allegation Allen has denied, and he has never been charged with a crime. The fallout from the split was compounded by what came next, since Allen went on to later marry Farrow’s other adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn.
The custody fight that followed set the tone for everything after. The accusations came to light amid a custody battle over Dylan and sons Moses and Ronan Farrow, a battle Allen lost in 1993, with the judge calling his behavior toward Dylan “grossly inappropriate,” even while saying the sexual abuse allegations had not been proven. More than three later, it is still very much alive. Dylan Farrow has continued to speak out, telling the Wall Street Journal in 2025 that she is “sick and tired of the misogynistic and unscientific narrative” that she was coached, insisting it is “a truth I reported as a child and have continued to recount consistently since.” Allen, for his part, has kept working and kept defending himself, even as his projects have struggled to find funding in recent years. Mia Farrow, notably, has softened toward the actors caught in the middle, saying in a 2024 interview that “I completely understand if an actor decides to work with him. I’m not one who says, ‘Oh, they shouldn’t.'” That the family feud is still generating fresh headlines in 2025 says something about how far this particular rift has traveled, and how little ground has actually been recovered.
Three very different rivalries, three very different reasons for lasting as long as they did. One was fueled by a stolen man and a stolen spotlight, one by sibling comparison that never let up, and one by allegations that remain painfully unresolved later. What connects them is simple: none of these feuds cooled with time. They just changed shape.
