Olivia’s poise shows up ex-husband’s boorish stunt

EVEN by the unforgiving standards of the most vicious catand-mouse games conducted between warring couples, serving legal papers while one party is on stage addressing a live audience is a new low. It’s a shameful act of passive aggression, designed to humiliate the recipient and stands as eternal proof of the server’s shabby character.

Olivia Wilde might not be Miss Popularity since her relationship with Harry Styles, 10 years her junior, caused her to ditch Jason Sudeikis, the father of her two young children.

Women are held up to a different standard of behaviour than men when it comes to affairs of the heart, particularly in Hollywood. There’s also the case that while women are usually expected to just grin and bear being passed over for a younger model, men often feel entitled to some form of retribution for being publicly cuckolded.

But even if Olivia fled to the other side of the world with a string of boybanders, wounding her partner’s male pride inexorably, she doesn’t deserve to be handed custody documents during her presentation at a showbiz convention in Las Vegas.

If she had been dodging the legal documents for months, as could well be the case, she could have been served them when she left the stage by someone waiting in the wings. Or later in her dressing room. There was no need for the huge public drama.

Yet for all that, Olivia’s selfrestraint, and her carrying on with the job at hand as if nothing had happened, was admirable. There’s many a Hollywood leading man from Will Smith to Johnny Depp who could learn from her composure and grace under fire.