Leo DiCaprio's 46th birthday edition
It's Gossip Time!
Hello and welcome to Gossip Time, a weekly guide to the stars by Allie Jones. This week: a movie star celebrates a birthday, a celebrity pastor’s mistress comes forward, and Hilary Duff talks about sex.
How old do you think Leonardo DiCaprio is? I guess I already told you in the subject line: On Wednesday, he turned 46. That sounds right, huh? Not 50, but certainly closer to 50 than he was before. What’s he doing to celebrate? Well, he went to the beach with his former co-star Emile Hirsch (shirtless photos here), but so far, no party. For birthdays past, DiCaprio’s rented out private clubs and filled them with other celebrities, like Larry David and Jennifer Aniston. (At his 44th birthday party at Spring Place in L.A., Beyoncé and Jay Z reportedly “sat near the dance floor as their hits played for the star-studded crowd.”)
It’s possible that he’s planning a Kardashian-style, private-island-everyone-was-tested soirée for this weekend, but I bet he takes the year off and spends some time with his girlfriend, the 23-year-old model and actress Camila Morrone. The pair has been dating for two years now, which makes this DiCaprio’s longest relationship since he broke up with model Bar Refaeli in 2011. According to the tabloids: It’s serious. Every few months, sources open up to People or Us Weekly about how Morrone is The One. This summer, after DiCaprio threw her a casual 23rd birthday party on a 43-meter yacht in L.A., a source told People that he “loves being with her.”
"He is usually very independent, spends lots of time with friends, but because of the lockdown, he has mostly spent time with Camila," the source added. “They are very close.”
That’s what I say about my husband: We’re very close.
DiCaprio, of course, has never talked about his relationship with Morrone publicly. But then, it’s probably difficult to know what to say. Zach Braff, 45, can relate: He’s been dating Florence Pugh, 24, for a year and half, and he still hasn’t found the words to describe their relationship.
In an interview with Mr. Porter this week, Braff was asked about Pugh’s impassioned defense of their romance that she posted to Instagram earlier this year. “She literally sat down, hit record on her phone and said that,” he recalled. “I thought: how could I possibly follow anything as intelligent and articulate as that? So, I chose not to.”
Ah well. Here’s a video of DiCaprio dancing with (at?) Morrone at Diddy’s 50th birthday party last December:
Hopefully we can all get together and celebrate again next year.
What’s the latest with Carl Lentz, the Hillsong pastor who was fired last week for unspecified “moral failures”? Well, his best celebrity friends, Justin and Hailey Bieber, unfollowed him on Instagram. (Hailey still follows his wife, Laura Lentz.) And his alleged mistress came forward, giving interviews to both The Sun and The New York Post, where she detailed how they met (at Domino Park in Williamsburg, naturally) and how Lentz’s wife discovered their illicit affair (the dreaded iCloud).
The woman goes by her first name, Ranin, and she’s apparently a fashion designer based in New York. She told the tabloids that Lentz originally introduced himself as an unmarried “sports agent,” but that he eventually admitted he was married. Lentz and Ranin reportedly carried on together from May until last week, when Hillsong fired him. Here’s how Ranin described their first encounter: “We were sitting and he asked if he could put his hand on my thigh. It was awkward, he didn’t know how to act at first. He was timid, acting like he was a virgin.”
Thankfully, Ranin didn’t elaborate on what “acting like he was a virgin” means, exactly. She told The Post that she hopes “other people will have the courage to speak up” about their experiences with Lentz. So far, he hasn’t commented on her claims.
Yesterday, Hillsong co-founder Brian Houston announced that the church would investigate the NYC branch after Lentz’s firing.
Publicly, Hillsong leadership has been tough on Lentz, but they may have given him a private heads up about being let go: The Post reported yesterday that Lentz sold his family’s home in Montclair, N.J. for $1.5 million just days before the scandal broke.
STUFF BY HILARY DUFF: This week, Hilary Duff appeared on an episode of “Lady Parts,” a web series hosted by the Modern Family actress Sarah Hyland that is apparently produced by Ellen Degeneres and sponsored by Hologic, a medical technology firm. In a wide-ranging conversation about puberty and becoming a woman, Duff revealed a misconception she had when she was younger. “I thought the first time you had sex, you were going to get pregnant,” she said.
Anyone else?
Finally, I’ll leave you with a technically perfect celebrity anecdote:
Damn.
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