Blake and Leo: Are They For Real?
Leonardo DiCaprio moves fast: freshly split from supermodel Bar Refaeli, the serial monogamist and modelizer has swiftly moved on with Blake Lively. Cue the "It Couple" headlines, centered around photographic evidence: Blake and Leo hugging on a boat in Cannes! Holding hands in Monte Carlo!
"He looked very in love," a photographer witness tells Us Weekly of their moonlight stroll last Friday. Two days later, DiCaprio reportedly introduced Lively as his girlfriend during a yacht party (who is he, James Bond?).
According to sources, the duo met in November at a business meeting and eventually kissed for the first time in January at Jeremy Renner's birthday party. Just weeks ago, DiCaprio broke up with Refaeli, a 25-year-old Sports Illustrated model.
DiCaprio is 36; Lively is 23. To paraphrase Matthew McConaughey in "Dazed and Confused," subbing in leggy blondes for high schools, "I get older, they stay the same age." It's obvious that DiCaprio, who once dated Gisele Bundchen, has a type.
"Leo didn't seem old until he started hanging out with a Gossip Girl," Mary Cunningham, a New York-based writer, tells The Famous. "While 36 isn't too old to date a 23-year-old, his I'm-the-new-Jack-Nicholson vibe makes him seem way older. And sorta creepy around a young blonde actress."
We would not go that far. While Lively's "Gossip Girl" gig might age her down, she's hardly an innocent ingenue: a batch of full-frontal nude photos are making the rounds online, forcing her rep to publicly deny they are authentic. That's easy to do, given all the photoshoppery going on nowadays. Still, the naked woman bears an uncanny resemblance to Lively.
But that's not enough to damage her happy-go-lucky image; another day, another nude scandal. Lucky, though, that Lively can use DiCaprio as a distraction of sorts. He's also a boon for her career.
"She's trying to be a movie star," says Lilit Marcus of Crushable.com, observing that dating an A-lister would help Lively transition from Serena van der Woodsen to Serious Actress.
She sniffs a setup.
"It comes across so fake and staged," says Marcus, discussing a photo she saw of Lively sporting suggestively messy hair during an outing with the actor. "It was clearly 'sex hair' but it was obviously faked. ... It looks like she had a stylist work on it for an hour."
If someone is tipping off the paparazzi to their whereabouts, DiCaprio doesn't seem to mind. He's just showing off another pretty, young, Amazonian thing.
