Guillermo del Toro Reveals He and Wife Lorenza Newton Quietly Divorced In 2017

Guillermo del Toro may have taken home an armful of Academy Awards last weekend for the The Shape of Water, the otherworldly love story he wrote and directed, but the state of his own love life is apparently a little less certain. In a post-Oscars interview with Mexican magazine Reforma, del Toro revealed that he and wife Lorenza Newton quietly split last year after more than 30 years of marriage, People reports. “I separated in February [of 2017] and divorced in September, but few people knew,” the Mexican filmmaker said. Del Toro, who married Newton in 1986 and shares two daughters, Marisa and Mariana, with her, declined to offer any further details about the divorce.

Questions arose about del Toro’s marital status after Sunday night’s ceremony, which he attended with writer Kim Morgan, with whom he’s working on his next film, Nightmare Alley. Though he walked arm-in-arm with Morgan on the Academy Awards red carpet, del Toro clarified to Reforma that the two are just friends and that Morgan had nothing to do with his split from Newton. “She is working with me, we have a nice friendship,” the director said. “In case some news appears, let’s clarify that I separated in February. I started working with her at the end of the summer.”

After winning the best director statuette on Sunday, del Toro gave Morgan a quick shout-out toward the end of his acceptance speech. “I want to thank the people that have come with me all the way—Kimmy,” he said, according to the Los Angeles Times, before listing a few other collaborators and his children. He ended the speech by quoting James Cagney in 1942’s Yankee Doodle Dandy: “‘My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my brothers and sisters thank you. And I thank you very much.'”