14 DAY TRIAL // At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, one of the most surprising couples in showbiz went public with their romance: Leonardo DiCaprio and Blake Lively. Despite trying to appear as if they just hooked up, they’ve been actually dating for far longer, says a new report.
In fact, the recent outings, all of which resulted in countless photos popping up online, have all been calculated to break the news that they’re an item, the latest print issue of Star magazine argues (story via here).
In other words, Leo and Blake handled the media frenzy that they knew their romance would generate like pros, by making sure they controlled every bit of information that got out there.
“Star can reveal that it was actually a calculated coming-out party for the pair after months of keeping their romance under wraps,” the magazine writes, hinting that the two may have actually been dating when DiCaprio was still with Bar Rafaeli.
“They first connected last November, soon after Blake learned she was going to dine with Leo – who was still with Bar Refaeli – to discuss costarring with him in The Great Gatsby,” says the publication.
A source confirms this, and even adds that Leo took a fancy to Blake from the start.
“She was a nervous wreck but played it cool and treated him like a regular guy, which Leo really liked. He was into her from the start. They began meeting regularly after that dinner,” adds a spy.
Tabloid reports put the two together again at Jeremy Renner’s now-infamous birthday party (the same one where Christina Aguilera reportedly showed up drunk and crashed on his bed, embarrassing him), but no one paid attention because, as far as they knew, DiCaprio was still with his model girlfriend.
“Leo ‘asked her back to his place that night.’ By March, Blake and Leo were getting so tight that she was slipping away from her hectic duties on the show’s NYC set to spend time with him in LA,” Star writes of how things evolved after Renner’s party.
“Leo finally ended it with Bar shortly after refusing to attend one of the fashion world’s biggest events, the Mat Gala, on May 2 – because he knew Blake would be there,” the publication further writes.