Billionaire Elon Musk and actress Talulah Riley are making another attempt to end their second marriage.
Riley filed to divorce Musk on Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court. Musk filed for divorce on New Year's Eve in 2014 but withdrew the petition seven months later. Source: Papercut Films
British actress Talulah Riley has filed to end her marriage to billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk.
Riley's filing in Los Angeles Superior Court is the second attempt to end the pair's second marriage to each other.
Musk, 44, filed for divorce in December 2014 but withdrew the petition seven months later.
A joint statement by Musk and 30-year-old Riley says they have both decided to end their marriage and will remain friends.
According to the statement, the Musk and Riley have been living separately for the past six months. Riley and Musk divorced in 2012 after first marrying in 2010, but re-married 18 months later. The second divorce petition filed by Musk was never finalized.
Musk co-founded Paypal and has gone on to help start the electric car company Tesla Motors and the private space firm SpaceX.
He is also a champion of building a futuristic hyperloop in California that would transport people and cargo at the speed of sound.
His pursuit of businesses at the cutting-edge of technology and his idol status among Hollywood liberals has led to him being described as "part playboy, part space cowboy".
Musk and Riley have had a rollercoaster relationship. Photo / Instagram
Riley appeared in Pride & Prejudice and Inception and wrote and directed her first feature film, Scottish Mussel in 2014. They have no children.
Musk has five sons with his first wife Justine, to whom he was married from 2000-2008; a set of twins, Griffin and Xavier, born in 2004, and a set of triplets, Damian, Saxon, and Kai aged born in 2006, conceived using IVF after their eldest child Nevada died of SIDS.
The visionary billionaire's relationship with Riley has been described as wild and tempestuous - even from the very start.
Musk first met her at the London night spot, Whisky Mist in 2008, as he was trying to clear his head after divorcing his first wife, Justine Wilson.
Introduced by the club's promoter, Musk was aroused by the curvy, sultry-eyed actress who arrived with a girlfriend, wrote author Ashlee Vance in Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, published by Ecco Books.
They had lunch the following day and Musk told Talulah, who was still a virgin at 22, that he wanted to "show her his rockets".
"I was skeptical, but he did actually show me rocket videos," Talulah stated.
They met up again in Beverly Hills several weeks later and lying in bed together at the Peninsula Hotel, he asked her to marry him.
He didn't have a ring so he suggested they shake on it and they did.
He later gave her three engagement rings - a giant one, an everyday ring, and a third with a diamond surrounded by ten sapphires.
Talulah thought she was stepping into life with "a world conquering, jet-setting billionaire". It turned out to be a baptism by fire.
His divorce was not final from Justine, he was short on cash and his two big investments, SpaceX and Tesla desperately needed cash infusions.
He had intense nightmares that made him yell out, climb on her and start screaming in his sleep.
She saw him through a very rough period of borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars, burning through $4 million a month to keep his projects alive, borrowing from friends to make payroll and negotiating with investors.
He retreated within himself. He lost a lot of weight, bags formed under his eyes and "he looked like death itself", Riley said to author Ashley Vance.
"I remember thinking this guy would have a heart attack and die. He seemed like a man on the brink' - that is until SpaceX metamorphosed from the joke of the aeronautics industry into one of its most consistent operators."
SpaceX sends a rocket up about once a month, carrying satellites for companies and nations and supplies to the International Space Station' and has once again made the United States a player in the worldwide commercial launch market.
While turning Tesla into a star of modern American industry the marriage with Talulah was over and the couple divorced.
They were apart for less than a year before getting back together again.
"I just wasn't happy', Riley said to author Ashlee Vance. "I thought maybe I had made the wrong decision for my life."
But she came back to Elon because of "the lack of viable alternatives".
"I looked around, and there was no one else nice to be with. Number two is that Elon doesn't have to listen to anyone in life. No one. He doesn't have to listen to anything that doesn't fit into his worldview. But he proved he would take s**t from me.
"He said, 'Let me listen to her and figure this thing out.' He proved that he valued my opinion on things in life and was willing to listen. I thought it was quite a telling thing for the man - that he made the effort. And then, I love him and missed him."
