Leonardo DiCaprio has reportedly struck up a new romance with model Eden Polani – but people can’t quite get over their age gap.
The Oscar-winning actor and environmentalist is 48, while Israeli model Eden is 19 years old.
She has now appeared to confirm their new relationship on Instagram, saying ‘we all have the right to fall in love’.
Leo’s dating history has been well-publicised, with the ages of his former love interests a hot topic of discussion for years.
His penchant for only dating women aged 25 or younger has become a meme, with one widely-circulated graph showing that his girlfriends stay the same age even as he grows older.
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The oldest woman Leo has ever been romantically linked to was Gigi Hadid – who was 27 at the time – but it’s understood they never actually dated.
His previous romances have included Blake Lively, Erin Heatherton, Kelly Rohrbach, and various other actors and models.
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Leo broke up with long-term girlfriend Camila Morrone just months after her 25th birthday. The same thing happened with his model ex, Bar Refaeli. Which could be a coincidence, but a pattern is definitely beginning to emerge.
Leonardo DiCaprio refuses to date a woman over 25. #dataviz
Leo’s latest rumoured girlfriend, the Israeli model Eden Polani, has pushed the age gap to a new extreme – she is just 19 years old.
Pictures of the pair at a party together sparked the new rumour (which she has now addressed), and Twitter has reacted in a big way.
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Several people have pointed out that the young beauty wasn’t even born yet when Leo had his big break on Titanic, which came out in 1998 (she was born in 2003).
Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic. Credit: Paramount Pictures
Others have questioned whether this latest rumoured romance is verging on ‘predatory’.
One person said: “Leonardo DiCaprio is nearly 50 and dating teenage girls. I’m sorry, but a 50 year old man that dates teenagers is a predator. Being a celebrity doesn’t exempt him from being a creep.”
Another said: “Stop making jokes about Leonardo DiCaprio being a almost 50 dating literal teenagers and start calling him what he is – a predator.”
Those jokes include tweets like this: “Leonardo DiCaprio’s girlfriend is so young her high school experience was interrupted by COVID 19.”
Several others have pointed out that the age gap between Leonardo DiCaprio and Eden Polani is the same as Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, who are starring alongside one another in The Last Of Us.
It’s also the same as the difference between Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven) and David Harbour (Jim Hopper) in Stranger Things – who literally play adopted father and daughter.
Addressing the rumours that are swirling, Eden posted on her own Instagram stories overnight.
She shared a photo of herself clutching an enormous bunch of pink roses, taken on a balcony in Paris.
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She wrote: “I am not obliged to air my private life. We all have the right to fall in love. Exercise the right of love – Polani.”
Featured image: Instagram @edenpolaniii / Wikimedia Commons
TV & Showbiz
Sir Ian McKellen pays emotional tribute to long-time friend and fellow northern actor Sir Patrick Stewart
Emily Sergeant
Sir Ian McKellen has paid an emotional tribute to his long-time friend and fellow northern actor, Sir Patrick Stewart, following his death.
Sir Patrick Stewart – who was born and bred in Mirfield, West Yorkshire, and is best-known for his theatre work alongside an illustrious 60-year screen career, taking on prominent roles in franchises such as Star Trek and X-Men – sadly passed away at the age of 86, with his death being announced publicly yesterday evening (29 October).
And now, his long-time friend and fellow northern actor, Sir Ian McKellen, has paid tribute.
Sir Patrick and Sir Ian shared the stage together countless times over their decades-long careers, but also famously starred alongside each other in the X-Men franchise, and subsequent Marvel movies, as Charles Xavier/Professor X and Magneto.
The tribute, shared across Sir Ian’s social media platforms, reads: “Before everything else, Patrick was defined by being born and bred in Yorkshire, the proud county in the north of England which he loved to the end. You could hear it in his accented voice and in the stern honesty with which he told you what he thought and felt. Yorkshiremen have no truck with half-truths or avoidance of big issues. He wore his heart on his sleeve, which made him a man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love.
“We first met as ambitious young actors with the Royal Shakespeare Company half a century ago but we weren’t in the same productions.
“My first strong memory was a few years later, meeting him in the street in central London when he told me about an offer to take over a leading part in ‘Star Trek’. “But Patrick think of your stage career in the UK. Do you really want to risk getting lost in Hollywood for years and years?”
“Well, he took the risk and thank goodness for us all that he did, for not just his devoted Trekkies, but film and theatre audiences who marvelled at his using international celebrity to star in a string of cinema successes (‘X-Men’ of course) and in great classical plays by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Arthur Miller, Peter Shaffer, Pinter and Beckett at Stratford-upon-Avon, in London’s West End and on Broadway.
“America was his adopted home, where he met his adored Sunny who has cared for him through sickness and health, through thick and thin.
“But he never forsook his origins: and the proudest achievement of the most respected and beloved actor of his generation on either side of the Atlantic, was his appointment as Chancellor of Huddersfield University in Yorkshire.”
Sir Patrick Stewart’s farewell performance will be in Avengers: Doomsday, which is being released in UK cinemas on 18 December 2026
Featured Image – Gage Skidmore (via Flickr)
TV & Showbiz
James Acaster reveals eerie song all Traitors contestants are forced to listen to before every roundtable
Emily Sergeant
James Acaster has revealed the eerie (and pretty surprising) song that all Traitors contestants are forced to listen to before every roundtable.
In case you’ve been living comfortably under a rock, you’ll probably be aware that comedian James Acaster is currently a contestant on this current season of BBC‘s smash-hit reality TV competition show, The Celebrity Traitors – a show that viewers in their millions are tuning into each week, with some big names on the cast.
Acaster is currently (spoiler alert… but it shouldn’t be at this point, we are several weeks in after all) one of three Traitors competing on the show, and he’s doing a pretty good job at it.
But we wonder how much of his success can be put down to the producers’ love of a certain song they like to play before every roundtable? Probably next to none, but it’s surprising to find out how much of an integral role the tune plays though.
The song we’re referring to here, it has been revealed, is ‘The Hanging Tree’ – a folk ballad made popular by The Hunger Games.
‘The Hanging Tree’, composed by James Newton Howard and Suzanne Collins, was famously sung by Jennifer Lawrence’s character Katniss Everdeen in the third instalment of the film franchise, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1.
The lyrics are as follows:
Are you, are you Coming to the tree Where they strung up a man They say who murdered three? Strange things did happen here No stranger would it be If we met at midnight In the hanging tree
So, as you can see, the song does make reference to ‘murder’, which is a key part of The Traitors game (not real murder, of course), but even with that context, we’re still not sure why the producers are keen to play it out before every roundtable.
During a viral TikTok clip from an on-stage Q&A this week, Acaster revealed the song’s usage to the audience: “You all walk in silence down the corridor, and you all sit down, and they don’t announce it’s gonna happen.
“The first time this will completely blindside you, but they do it every single roundtable. They play that song from The Hunger Games, that ‘coming to the tree’ song. Like acapella, Jennifer Lawrence.”
He continued: “It was every f***ing time, it was the only song we heard the whole time we were in there, and all day I would have it in my head constantly, everyone would, I’d go ‘have you got coming to the tree in your head?’ and they’d go ‘yes, it’s in my head, again’.”
Viewers who watch the show may have spotted the song being played in the background or transition between certain scenes, but now it’s been revealed that the contestants hear it too.
Who would’ve thought?
Featured Image – Euan Cherry / BBC / Studio Lambert
Daisy Jackson -
8th February 2023 
