JANET STREET-PORTER: Sorry sisters, but I don’t care if Leo DiCaprio is dating girls half his age. These women are old enough and smart enough to choose who they hang out with
Vanessa Feltz has received thousands of messages of sympathy following the very public break-up with her partner of the last 16 years, Ben Ofeodu. It must be horrible to find out that person you love and trusted has cheated on you so sneakily.
In all those outpourings of love and support for Vanessa, there’s been little comment about the 10-year age difference between the two protagonists: Vanessa, at 60, was a decade older than her errant former lover. Times have changed so much. She was 44 when they met in 2005, and there was a considerable amount of negative comment at the time.
I know how it felt back then. I dated the photographer Normski for four years. We were photographed together at the premiere of Four Weddings and Funeral in 1994 when I was 48 and he was 27, and you can imagine the nasty comments we received about our age difference. Norm was trashed as a ‘toy boy’, a bad joke considering how smart he was.
Thankfully, society has moved on. In 2023, if you are over the age of consent and so is your partner, what you get up to is your business. In the era of gender fluidity, age should be unimportant.
Sadly, there’s one exception: it’s called Leo DiCaprio.
Janet Street-Porter: Why are so many smart feminists bothered by the fact that a 48-year-old movie star, who is losing his waistline and his looks, is regularly photographed hanging out with women half his age? (DiCaprio pictured with Camila Morrone in 2018
Only the other day he was spotted enjoying the company of 19-year-old Israeli model Eden Polani. Within hours, the twitter erupted with predictable venom
Why are so many smart feminists bothered by the fact that a 48-year-old movie star, who is losing his waistline and his looks, is regularly photographed hanging out with women half his age? Any sighting of Leo DiCaprio seems to cause huge outrage and a host of snotty comments like ‘Titanic is too old for Leo to have starred in it’.
There have been countless debates about whether the actor has a cut-off point of 25 when it comes to choosing a partner.
It’s true that Leo’s girlfriends – or rather the majority of the women he has been seen with in recent years – have all been under 30. And the star broke up with his last long-term partner Camile Morrone in June 2022, just after her 25thbirthday.
Since then, there’s been a string of beauties too long to mention, and only the other day he was spotted enjoying the company of 19-year-old Israeli model Eden Polani. Within hours, the twitter erupted with predictable venom.
Comedian and actor Katharine Ryan commented ‘no crime, just a creepy pattern…..it’s all I’ve talked about for SEVEN years.’
Caitlin Moran weighed in with ‘I feel like he has Titanic Trauma…he’s dating women like he’s still the age he was when he shot it, and he’s ALWAYS on holiday on a yacht’.
There are jokes that Leo’s girls weren’t even born when Titanic was released in 1997.
Following the picture of the star sitting next to Eden Polani, Dr Charlotte Proudman tweeted ‘Not enough people are talking about Leo is almost 50 and he’s ‘getting close’ to a 19-year-old girl’.
Of course, there is no evidence whatsoever that Leo DiCaprio did anything other than sit next to this person at the launch party for Ebony Riley’s new EP, but that’s not good enough for the haters.
On Tuesday Leo turned up at a party at Chiltern Firehouse and was spotted leaving at 4am next morning, closely followed by 21-year-old Josie Redmond (pictured), an American model
They seem to be saying that there’s an element of unspecified ‘danger’ if a 48-year-old man is in the same room as any woman under the age of 25, even if those women are intelligent, hardworking, successful and perfectly capable of making up their own minds about who they hang out with and what they do with their bodies.
In other words, the concerned ‘feminists’ ranting on Twitter appear to be thinking on behalf of the sisterhood, which is patronising to say the least.
Leo DiCaprio obviously likes hanging out in nightclubs and listening to mind-numbing music for hours at a time. In the last week, he has been spending time in London, attending various parties connected to the British Academy awards. On Saturday he was allegedly deep in conversation with Love Island host Maya Jama. On Sunday they connected again, at the post Bafta party at Annabel’s nightclub. On Tuesday Leo turned up at a party at Chiltern Firehouse and was spotted leaving at 4am next morning, closely followed by 21-year-old Josie Redmond, an American model.
Leo has stamina, rarely leaving a party before 3am, usually wearing his sensible trainers and comfy trousers. Around the same time, a young woman may be leaving too – and her name will be added to the ever-increasing list of ‘Leo’s girlfriends’.
Leo has stamina, rarely leaving a party before 3am, usually wearing his sensible trainers and comfy trousers
For all we know, Leo DiCaprio might be a eunuch. We know so very little about his sexual preferences, other than he has correctly worked out that being photographed with glamorous women will bring him plenty of publicity and he’s still not short of work.
At 48, if he wanted to get married it probably would have happened already. By now, the obsession with Leo’s love life is bordering on the bizarre. Nobody seems to be bothered by the news that another Academy award winner, 59-year-old Brad Pitt – currently shooting Wolves in New York with his pal George Clooney – has been dating social influencer Ines de Ramon (THIRTY years his junior) since last November.
Could Leo be secretly scouting for a carer or a companion rather than a hot date? Someone to iron his pyjamas, make the herbal tea and fill up his hot water bottle?
Rupert Murdoch ditched Jerry Hall (26 years his junior) after six years of marriage and – at 91 – was photographed weaving about in the waves on holiday earlier this year with 66-year-old Ann-Lesley Smith. Good luck to him!
Don’t ask me to get worked up about Leo’s love life.
There’s always the possibility that it simply doesn’t exist.
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