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March 22, 2026 Julia Evans – Entertainment Editor Entertainment

Actress Amanda Peet revealed on a podcast that her husband, screenwriter David Benioff, dated fellow actress Lake Bell during a nine-month separation in their relationship. Peet, 54, shared the story on Dax Shepherd’s “Armchair Expert” podcast, recounting how she discovered the relationship through mutual acquaintances.

According to Peet, she and Benioff, 55, had entered a “mutual breakup” period when she was 31 and strongly desiring to start a family. “I wanted to have a baby so badly, I was 31,” Peet said, as reported by HuffPost. “So I was really looking down the barrel of… It was rough. I find out, from through the grapevine, that he’s dating her.”

The revelation was particularly jarring for Peet, as she and Bell, 46, are frequently mistaken for one another. She described an incident occurring within 24 hours of learning about the relationship, where a fellow actor at a bar mistakenly addressed her as Bell. “From across the bar, this dude just goes: ‘Lake! Lake!’ And I was like, ‘This actually can’t be happening,’” Peet recalled to Shepherd.

Peet and Benioff married in 2006 and share three children: Frances, 19, Molly, 15 and Henry, 11. Benioff is best known as the co-creator of the HBO series “Game of Thrones.” Bell has starred in the sitcom “Bless This Mess” and the film “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”

The Daily Beast reported that Peet has been compared to Bell so often that the resemblance inspired a scene in the television series “Fantasy Life,” in which Peet’s character is mistaken for Bell by a fan of “Bless This Mess.” Peet acknowledged being a “jealous person” but also praised Bell’s appearance, joking that it was “hard to feel subpar for someone that gets mistaken for her.”

According to a Wikipedia entry, Amanda Peet was born in New York City on January 11, 1972, and began her acting career in 1995. She has appeared in numerous films and television shows, including “Jack & Jill,” “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” and “Your Friends & Neighbors.”