Having previously shaken off relationships with a number of British boyfriends—Tom Hiddleston, Calvin Harris, and Harry Styles among them—Taylor Swift reportedly has a new London love interest, a budding actor who reportedly still lives with his parents.
Swift has been secretly dating 26-year-old Joe Alwyn, a rising star whose latest film is the adaptation of Julian Barnes’ novel The Sense of an Ending, for several months, according to a report in British tabloid The Sun.
The pop superstar and the talented Brit have been dating for several months, The Sun says, with the star going as far as to rent a house in North London to use as a base when seeing him. Swift, the report says, has taken to wearing a variety of disguises, including scarves, hats, and even a wig when they step out together—to avoid being identified by the media.
ADVERTISEMENT
She’s taken such precautions because, according to the report, she believes that the media circus surrounding her relationship with Hiddleston doomed their short-lived romance.
A source told the paper: “Taylor and Joe are the real deal, this is a very serious relationship. But after what happened with Tom Hiddleston, they were determined to keep it quiet.”
They added: “Taylor has flown in via private jets and her security has made it a military-like mission to prevent her from being seen.”
Alwyn’s biggest movie credit to date is the lead role of a soldier returning home from the Iraq War in Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, opposite Kristen Stewart. He had to drop out of university to appear in the Ang Lee saga.
“I was not in too dissimilar a position to Billy at times,” Alwyn told The Daily Beast. “He is thrown into this surreal situation where cameras are suddenly being pointed at his face, and people are putting microphones in front of him, and there was an echo between that and me suddenly being plucked out of school and taken to America, where I had never been, and working on a set, which I had never been on, with faces that I knew but... I was also thrown into something at the deep end.”
The relationship with Alwyn is reportedly Taylor’s first since her relationship with Thor star Hiddleston ended last September.
The Sun quoted a “close friend” of Swift’s confirming the relationship, saying: “This isn’t a new couple alert or a secret relationship—the only people this has been a secret to is the media because all of us, Taylor and Joe’s closest friends and their families, were aware they have been together for several months and have known each other for a long time… she and Joe decided early on to keep their private life private.”
