Actor Leonardo DiCaprio has in recent years been hounded by folks bringing up how odd it is that the well-known celebrity, now 48, can never seem to manage to date anyone older than 25. And by “odd,” they mean “creepy and gross,” and it gets worse every year as he gets older while his romantic partners do not.
People started ringing the alarm again after DiCaprio broke up with girlfriend Camila Morrone last August, just a couple months after she turned 25. Most recently, the Titanic star was spotted getting a bit cozy with 19-year-old model Eden Polani at a Los Angeles party, setting off rumors that the two are dating.
An anonymous source allegedly told TMZ that the pair, who were only photographed sitting next to each other, are not actually together in any romantic capacity and were merely hanging out in the same group. Whether this is a source that can be trusted is questionable, but there appears to be little else to suggest that DiCaprio and Polani are dating other than this one photo, so this can hardly be called more than a simple rumor.
People can be forgiven, however, for being sensitive on the topic of who DiCaprio is dating considering his long history of dating women younger than him, and his alarmingly consistent habit of breakups just before or after they turn 25. When he was 35, he broke up with another model, Bar Refaeli, soon after she hit this age, and he ended his relationship with Blake Lively when she was 24.
Other partners were ditched when they were between 20 and 24, and his relationship with Kelly Rohrbach, who he started dating when she was 25, didn’t last long. The oldest woman DiCaprio was ever even rumored to be getting close to was 27-year-old Gigi Hadid, but that speculation petered out quickly.
There has long been a chronic problem with male celebrities continuing to date very young women as they age, creating some disturbing age gap graphs. DiCaprio has definitely continued this trend, and the idea of the 48-year-old dating a 19-year-old has resulted in comparisons to actors who have played father figures to their young female counterparts.
One TikTok user pointed out that Pedro Pascal, who stars in the apocalyptic series The Last of Us, is 47, and his co-star, who plays the teen girl he’s escorting through the zombie-infested ruins of human civilization, is 19.
“It’s off by one year but it just really shows how f—ing nasty that is,” said the TikToker.
Want to get ever nastier? People are also pointing out that 47-year-old David Harbour, who plays the adopted father of 18-year-old Millie Bobby Brown’s character in Stranger Things, has the same age gap with her as DiCaprio does with Polani.
Although an age gap in a relationship does not automatically mean anything untoward is going on, there is a correlation between such gaps and abuse. Young adults are generally more prone to manipulation and abuse in relationships, and much older partners can have the experience necessary to exploit this vulnerability. The result is that a lot of people can get suspicious when someone chronically dates people much younger than them, especially when it’s a man dating young women.
It seems that the public is just about running out of patience for DiCaprio in this regard. The jokes are becoming merciless.
