March 2012 Town & Country

An upside to divorce? Actress/model Olivia Wilde tells Town & Country she can now see the upside in hers.

A recent photo of Olivia Wilde showed her walking down the street with her ex-husband Tao Ruspoli. Another set of photos showed Wilde canoodling with her new boyfriend, “Saturday Night Live” star and film actor Jason Sudeikis. It may seem confusing to you and me, but to the former “House” star, it’s become the norm. Heck, next week, we might find a photo of Wilde, Ruspoli and Sudeikis chatting over coffee!

In one of the more amicable Hollywood divorces to date, Wilde and her now ex-husband, Italian prince and documentary filmmaker Ruspoli, have walked away with their friendship intact. While that’s no small feat by anyone’s standards, it’s truly remarkable in Hollywood. Though the couple has made it look easy since their early 2011 divorce, Wilde opens up in the March issue of Town & Country magazine that letting go of her almost nine-year marriage has left her on shaky ground.

Having embarked on married life at the tender age of 18, Wilde now says of divorce, “It makes you feel like such a failure, but I think this whole traumatic year has made me a better actor.” As for facing divorce at just 27, she can now say, “And the good thing about getting divorced young–if there is a good thing–is that it makes you realize there’s no schedule in life. It blasts you wide open and frees you to be honest with yourself.”

Honest about the decision to elope with Ruspoli when she was just a kid? Perhaps. On marrying young, Wilde now concedes, “The danger is that you evolve over the years and find yourself in a different place.”

That place includes a heavy workload of no fewer than nine films lined up and in some phase of production, including next month’s “Butter,” costarring Jennifer Garner, Hugh Jackman, Ashley Greene and Ty Burrell. It would seem that while Wilde’s marriage has ended, her career continues to blossom, leading her to work with the very best in the industry. Though, even she admits the bar has been set pretty high in that regard.

Thanks to her successful journalist parents’ Hollywood connections after writing the screenplay for 1997′s “The Peacemaker,” Wilde was introduced to the film’s star as a teen–none other than the gorgeous George Clooney. Of her first celeb encounter, she says, “Having George Clooney be the first Hollywood actor I met set a pretty high standard. He’s genuinely sincere, smart, gracious, and I like his politics, too, which always helps.” And the eyes. Surely his eyes helped, too.

Catch Wilde sans Clooney but alongside Jackman in “Butter” when it hits theaters everywhere March 16.