Love is dead: Charlize Theron and Sean Penn are over.

What happened in Europe?

The year-and-a-half-long relationship and rumoured engagement of Sean Penn, 54, and Charlize Theron, 39, is over.

The couple, who demanded too much respect to have even been given a couple name, were last seen together at the Cannes Film Festival.

E! News reports: “The 52-year-old Oscar winner [he’s actually 54] and the 39-year-old South African beauty have split,” which is factually correct, but I’d rewrite it something along the lines of:

“The Oscar-winner, producer and human-rights activist broke up with the bad-tempered 54-year-old man with a younger-blonde-woman habit.”

It’s been reported that it was Theron who called off the engagement, but why? No one knows. Did she just find out about the Madonna thing? Did she only just see The Tree of Life?

The pair, who appeared totally loved-up at the premiere of Theron’s film Max Max: Fury Road in May, had known each other for 20 years before they decided to start doing it.

The two of them did work together earlier this year, which can be a trying experience for any couple, especially when one of them has a really nasty temper.

Noted angry man Penn directed Theron in the drama, called The Last Face.

Theron has never been married, and Penn has been married twice before – the aforementioned tempestuous Madonna years, and a 14-year marriage with Claire Underwood Robin Wright, 48, which resulted in two exceptionally attractive children.

Theron has a little boy, Jackson, who is now three, and Penn had planned to formally adopt the child.

He has been effusive in his praise of Theron and their love.

“I’m self-proclaimed bad at mathematics but I can do two plus two,” he told Esquire.

“Fifty-three years old plus finally beginning to figure out why you haven’t been happy in a single relationship? It could seem too late.

“But to run into somebody now who you care about is a much more passionate, deeper, truer and – God! – a much happier feeling.”

For her part, Theron said of Penn, “I’m a very, very, very lucky girl. Very lucky. He’s hot. He is hot.”

WHAT WENT WRONG?!

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