In the age of social media, it is rare to not know every single detail of a celebrity’s life, from what they eat, where and how they work out and how they are passing their time throughout COVID.
But as the old saying goes: sometimes less is more so it can be the celebrities that choose to keep parts of their life sacred that we find all the more appealing.
Take, for example, Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel who just casually announced that they had welcomed their second child, Phineas. At first, it was reported that the new addition had entered the world this week but nope — he was actually born in July 2020.
Biel and Timberlake, who also have a five-year-old son named Silas, have been quarantining at their home in Montana and had not been photographed publicly since March.
A glance at each of the respective Instagram accounts provides a refreshing insight as neither of the famous spouses, who have been in the entertainment industry since they were kids, overshares the details of their private lives.
It’s an approach that not all celebrities take, but there is something to be said for the ones that do.
After years of enduring public heartache (and getting endless material out of it), Taylor Swift has chosen to keep her long term relationship with Joe Alwyn to herself with the two rarely making public appearances together and declining to speak about one another in interviews. Swift addressed the origin of her relationship with Alwyn in her Netflix documentary Miss Americana, explaining that the couple got together during a tumultuous time in her life when she felt she needed to step back from the spotlight.
“I figured I had to reset everything,” she says in the doco. “I also was falling in love with someone who had a really wonderfully normal, balanced, grounded life. We decided together that we wanted our relationship to be private.”
Likewise, Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling are so notoriously private that they have appeared on exactly one red carpet together, back in 2012 for The Place Beyond The Pines — a film in which they both starred. Mendes, who shares daughters Esmeralda and Amada with Gosling, addressed the couple’s stance on privacy when responding to a follower on Instagram.
“Hi! I have always had clear boundaries when it comes to my man and my kids…Since my children are still so little and don’t understand what posting their image really means, I don’t have their consent…As far as Ryan and I, it just works for us this way, to stay private,” the actress wrote.
Our very own Margot Robbie also prefers to keep the spotlight on her stellar acting performances instead of her love life, choosing to remain fairly coy about her relationship with Tom Ackerley, whom she married in 2016. Robbie never announced her engagement, instead of posting an uncaptioned photo of her and new hubby with the focus on Robbie’s ring finger after they wed.
While we ubdoubtedly love revelling in the lives and loves of our favourite celebrities, we have to tip our hats to those who leave us wanting more. Sometimes, the less we know about an actor or musician, the easier it is to immerse ourselves in their work and to appreciate them as artists, instead of headlines.