British actors Juliet Mills, 84, and Maxwell Caufield, 66, have been married for over 45 years — and in a recent interview on the Still Here Hollywood podcast, the pair revealed that they never thought about their 18-year age gap.

“It didn’t occur to me, and Juliet maintains to this day it really didn’t occur to her either,” said Caulfield, an accomplished stage actor who also appeared on Dynasty as Miles Coby and in Grease 2 and Gettysburg, but might be best known for his role as fading pop star Rex Manning in the 1995 comedy Empire Records. “She had such a youthful quality — always has, always will do. It’s presumptuous of me to even think that I was going to hook up with her; that wasn’t really where it was at. It just happened so fast, it caught us both off guard.”

“We didn’t think about it,” added Mills, who is best known for her Golden Globe-nominated performance in the 1970 sitcom Nanny and the Professor and her Daytime Emmy-nominated run on Passions in the 2000s. “We didn’t talk about it, either. It was just two people who just communicated on such a high level, or in different ways. We had so much in common, because we were both English, to start with. We’re both actors. And we just had a communication, instantly. It was like saying, ‘Hello, where have you been! I know you!’ And I do believe in reincarnation.”

In fact, according to Caulfield, Mills’ sister, The Parent Trap star Hayley Mills, theorized that Caulfield might be the reincarnation of Juliet’s male twin, who died in infancy. “I don’t believe you were the twin,” Juliet replied. “Well, that shoots that theory down,” said Caulfield, laughing. “I believe I knew you in some relationship in another life, that I believe, ” Mills went on.

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Caulfield has often been outspoken about his love story with Mills; in a 2023 Reddit AMA, he announced that Mills was “the cat’s whiskers,” and when a Reddit user asked if he had “ever sung ‘Say No More’ for Empire fans,” he replied, “I’m gonna sing it to Juliet tonight.” In the same AMA, he declared that the happiest moment in his life “has to involve my wife Juliet. Eating mushrooms on the edge of the Grand Canyon.”

Caufield and Mills met in 1980, when he was performing in The Elephant Man, and married that same year. It was a first marriage for Caufield, and a third for Mills, who had been married to songwriter Russell Alquist Jr. from 1961 to 1974, and construction manager Michael Miklenda from 1975 to 1980. Mills had two children from her previous marriages, while Caufield has no biological children.