Chris Pratt and Anna Faris‘ careers have changed radically since they wed in 2009, and the actor’s busy schedule may have contributed to their decision to split.
The couple announced their separation after eight years of marriage.
“Anna and I are sad to announce we are legally separating,” Pratt wrote in a joint statement shared on Facebook on Sunday. “We tried hard for a long time, and we’re really disappointed.”
Pratt, 38, and Faris, 40, have one child together, Jack, who will turn 5 in August. The two met on the set of Take Me Home Tonight in 2007 and got engaged a year later before marrying in summer 2009.
At the time, Pratt was best known for his roles in the TV series The O.C. and Everwood, but Faris was a comedic movie star. The actress was the lead in the Scary Movie franchise as well as 2008’s The House Bunny, where she starred as a Playboy bunny who was kicked out of the mansion after her 27th birthday. She also had fans talking in scene-stealing roles in films such as Brokeback Mountain and Just Friends.
Pratt was mostly on the sideline while his wife’s career skyrocketed.
“I’ve had those moments, where I was like the guy holding the purse at events and people just looked right through me. And, you know, actors come up and just blatantly hit on my wife in front of me and don’t even look at me,” Pratt told GQ in 2015. “I’m like, ‘What the f—, dude?‘”
Faris also previously admitted that her first marriage to actor Ben Indra, which ended in 2007, failed due to her success while his own career stalled.
“That kind of destroyed my marriage,” she shared with Marie Claire four years later. “The divide became too great.”
Though Faris remained busy with voiceover work in movies and a starring role in the CBS series Mom alongside Alison Janney, Pratt has become one of the biggest names in Hollywood in recent years.
Pratt first left his mark on TV in Parks & Recreation from 2009 through 2015, playing the lovable slacker Andy Dwyer, but the real shift came when he landed the lead role in 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy, which filmed in London. The sitcom character with a cute smile was replaced by a bonafide movie star, complete with six-pack abs.
The actor went on to star in blockbuster hits such as Jurassic World and do voiceover work for The Lego Movie. He also starred alongside some of Hollywood’s leading ladies, such as Jennifer Lawrence in Passengers.
A source tells PEOPLE Faris often seemed unhappy while Pratt was away filming and that the separation was often hard for her to bear.
During an appearance at SiriusXM for The Jess Cagle Interview in 2016, Pratt expressed his gratitude for technology but admitted that keeping in touch with his family via Skype and phone calls doesn’t take the place of being with them.
“Nothing can substitute for actual face time—even FaceTime can’t substitute being present and being able to physically hold your family,” he said. “But you do everything you can. But that’s the one downside. The distance.”
Sometimes the family would travel together while Pratt was working. Faris and Jack joined the actor in Hawaii for the first half of Jurassic World‘s six-month shoot.
On the weekends, “we’d be out in the water and exploring around the island,” Pratt told PEOPLE in a 2015 profile.
However, Faris returned to Los Angeles with their son to work on her show Mom when filming for the blockbuster moved to Louisiana.
“As long as your kid knows that you care and that you’re responsible for their upbringing, their childhood is going to be great,” Pratt said of keeping in touch over long distances. “He’s never going to have a shortage of love all around him.”
Pratt’s time away from home led to rumors that he was being unfaithful to his wife, which Faris said bothered her even if they weren’t true.
During a 2016 episode of her podcast Anna Faris Is Unqualified, the actress spoke with Nocturnal Animals star Isla Fisher about the hardships of being part of a public couple.
“We were in the public a little bit, there were some tabloid rumors about strain in our relationship,” Faris explained. “I just remember feeling so hurt in a way that bothered me, because I didn’t want to think of myself as somebody who could be bothered by … tabloid s—.”
Asked by Fisher what hurt the most, Faris answered, “I think it was a combination of things. I take pride in how great my relationship is with Chris, but having said that, of course, in this crazy world where he’s off doing movies and I’m in L.A. raising our child, of course I’m going to feel vulnerable, like any normal human would.”
Even though she knew the rumors were false, Faris said, “It made me feel incredibly very insecure.”
