November 18, 2010 – “Desperate Housewives” star Eva Longoria filed for divorce Wednesday from her French basketball player husband Tony Parker, three years after they married in a lavish French chateau wedding.
Longoria, described as “devastated,” said she was sad and still loved Parker, but reports suggested the divorce was precipitated after she found hundreds of text messages from another woman on his cell phone.
“It is with great sadness that after seven years together, Tony and I have decided to divorce. We love each other deeply and pray for each other’s happiness,” said the 35-year-old actress on her Twitter feed.
Court papers filed at Los Angeles Superior Court, and seen by AFP, showed that Longoria — who has reportedly canceled all upcoming appearances — cited “irreconcilable differences” for the split.
But a television presenter who is a close friend of the actress said Longoria told her she had found hundreds of texts on his cellphone from another woman, the wife of a Parker teammate on the San Antonio Spurs.
Longoria also said her husband cheated on her earlier in their marriage with another woman, said Mario Lopez on the television show “Extra” that aired late Wednesday, adding that Parker had stayed in touch with that woman on Facebook.
“She is devastated, she wants us all to know that… But she’s strong,” he added.
Parker was asked about the split on Wednesday evening, when he spoke briefly with a clutch of reporters outside the Spurs’ locker room before the team’s NBA contest against Chicago.
“It’s a difficult time right now for me and Eva,” said Parker, who didn’t elaborate. “We got a joint statement and everything else is our private life,” he added.
San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich also addressed the matter on Wednesday, according to NBA.com.
“This is a difficult situation for everyone obviously,” Popovich said. “But Eva and Tony are two people that we love and care about, and we wish them both the best as they move through this. That’s really all I have to say about it.”
Longoria and 28-year-old Parker, who is one of the top European players in the National Basketball Association, tied the knot in a lavish wedding in a chateau outside Paris in July 2007.
The couple signed a pre-nuptial agreement a month before their wedding, updated two years later, the magazine reported online.
Court papers said the actress sought “dissolution of marriage” from Parker, and asked to return to her pre-marriage name, Eva Jacqueline Longoria.
The actress checked the box requesting “spousal support” and noted that an “earnings assignment will be issued.” She requested that both sides pay their own legal bills.
Parker published an almost identical message to his wife’s Twitter remark, on his own Facebook page, saying: “It is with great sadness that after seven years together, Eva and I have decided to divorce.”
Longoria said shortly after they married that she and Parker planned to raise a family in the United States. But despite rumors of pregnancy the couple have no children.
In a YouTube clip last year, Longoria — who plays former runway model Gabrielle Solis on the popular US television series about life in suburbia — said her idea of paradise was being in love.
“Whether it is being in love or feeling love or giving love or receiving love, but to be in this constant environment of intimacy and ecstasy,” she said.
“To me that is paradise,” she added in the post on the YouTube channel of Spanish singer Alejandro Sanz, who had asked his celebrity friends to answer the question “what is your ideal paradise?”