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If he was too old back then, what is he now?
By Isaac Serna-Diez — Written on Feb 09, 2023
Mischa Barton was allegedly once told that she should sleep with Leonardo DiCaprio in order to further boost her breakout career in the mid-2000s.
Barton, who is now 37 years old, is a British-American actress famous for her roles in “The O.C.” and “Notting Hill.”
When Mischa Barton was told to sleep with Leonardo DiCaprio, she said he was too old.
According to a Harpers and Queen Magazine interview, Mischa Barton’s publicist at the time, Craig Schneider, had urged her to sleep with the “Titanic” star, who would have been 30 years old at the time.
This was right after DiCaprio and Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen had split up in 2005, and Barton and Schneider had seen DiCaprio at a photo shoot in Malibu.
"For the sake of your career, go and sleep with that man," Schneider had turned to her and said, but Barton refused to do it, claiming that she wasn’t interested in dating older men — she was 19 at the time.
"Isn't Leo like, 30, or something?" she said to Harpers and Queen Magazine.
Outside of the one, chance encounter in which no words between the two actors were exchanged, Barton and DiCaprio are not known to have had any relationship — even platonic.
The old news recently resurfaced after Leonardo DiCaprio was seen with his new girlfriend, Eden Polani.
DiCaprio, who is now 48 years old, was recently spotted and photographed with Eden Polani, a 19-year-old model, at a record release party for Ebony Riley’s EP in Los Angeles.
After the photos hit the internet, social media heaved a collective sigh and told their friends “he’s back at it again,” after having just broken up with his now-ex-girlfriend Camila Morrone in August 2022 after she turned 25 — an age he’s not known for dating women over.
If you’ve been online on any form of social media over the last few years or so, you likely understand where all the jokes about Leonardo DiCaprio’s creepy behavior come from, and why this is such a big deal.
TMZ on February 7th, 2023, revealed that sources close to the star can confirm he is not dating Polani — but what does it say about him that everyone believed it in the first place?
They told the tabloid that “just because Leo might be talking to or sitting with a girl doesn't mean he's dating her.”
But this is exactly what Leonardo DiCaprio is known for.
He is known for dating women many years his junior as he continues to age and set a limit on how old his girlfriends can be, and the people of the world have continued to wrack their brains on why this might just be the case.
Larry Michel, a San Diego-based counselor, explains that some simply “want to date women that are young at heart.”
Men like DiCaprio are “not interested in women that have dialed in who they are and what they want so tightly that there is nothing for the man to contribute.”
Maybe he wants some semblance of control over his partner in his relationship — something that age and experience would definitely allow him to feel (almost like seniority).
Or maybe he just hasn’t come to terms with the fact that he himself is aging and wants to live vicariously through the young women that he comes into contact with.
Whatever the case, it’s worth it to point out that in 2005, when Barton refused to sleep with DiCaprio, she thought the age gap from 19 to 30 was too wide for her, and that puts many things about the actor’s current behaviors 18 years later into perspective.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Keep up with his rants about current events on his Twitter.