Rachael Leigh Cook Explains Why Marriage with Daniel Gillies Ended, Reveals What She's Learned After Divorce

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Rachael Leigh Cook is opening up about her split from ex-husband Daniel Gillies and what she has learned after getting divorced.

The former couple got married in 2004 and they separated in 2019. They share two children: a daughter born in 2013 and a son born in 2015. Rachael is best known for starring in 1999’s She’s All That and 2001’s Josie and the Pussycats. She also has starred in many Hallmark Channel films in recent years. Daniel is best known for his work on the shows The Vampire Diaries and The Originals.

Rachael is now dating a fellow Hallmark Channel actor who was also a major star in the early 2000s!

So, what happened between Rachael and Daniel?

Rachael explained what led to her breakup with Daniel

Rachael appeared on the I Love You So Much Podcast ILYSM talked about the “biggest thing [she] can take accountability for in our split.”

I think I’ve always just been like a little bit hyper independent, just having to look after myself for so long, just you know, being a kid in the industry and being on my own and being financially independent and all this stuff. Like it would be really easy, I think if you were Daniel, to feel like I didn’t really need him that much. I think that I built and lived out my life very much that way. I had a strong network of friends. I have my family here. And Daniel really likes to be able to be there, step up, do the thing. You know, he’s really good at that.

Rachael says that she never gave Daniel the opportunity to be the one caring for her.

In that sense, aside from being good at having a common enemy with me when it was time, which he kills at, and then in the raising of our children, of course, he’s also awesome, but I don’t think that I, sort of, gave him an ability to be able to execute on something that’s a major skill that he has. How much can you love on someone who’s, like, ‘We’re here for the good times, I don’t feel like fighting with you.’ I’m also, like, light touch avoidant, probably.

Rachael added that “we had our own stuff about, just how it was not so much a fit.” Whereas she’s a people pleaser, he doesn’t care what others think.

“I thought that that was cool, and my life has been a lot of pendulum swings between, like, being involved with people who embodied different traits in that way,” she said.

Rachael explains what she’s learned since divorce

“I had a good little bit of lessons with regret. I was feeling really down on dating before I met my now-boyfriend,” Rachael said, referring to current boyfriend Brandon Routh.

“Instead of feeling mad at all the sort of, rough dates, or brief dating experiences that I had had, I wrote out a list of everything I learned from every single person I went on a date with or was in a short relationship with,” she said. “And I was like, ‘I learned so much stuff!’ I learned so many things about what I do and don’t want, but also just like accidental bits of knowledge that they taught me. I’m like, ‘I wouldn’t have learned any of these things.’”