Has Hiddy REALLY fallen for the most calculating woman in pop?
How sweet! Taylor Swift’s ‘dating’ Tom Hiddleston just as he’s tipped for 007. But then she always seems to bag the man of the moment — and write a hit about him when it’s all over
STOP all the clocks. Tom Hiddleston, probably the most desired man in Britain after his sizzling turn in BBC drama The Night Manager, is off the market. And hold the front page, for the most ambitious, yet outwardly modest Old Etonian in showbusiness has only gone and hooked up with pop diva, social media powerhouse and undisputed self-publicity queen Taylor Swift. Less than three weeks after she unceremoniously dumped her British lover, DJ Calvin Harris, Swift is seeing another A-list male in yet another spotlight-hoovering romance.
In a series of pictures taken on the beach outside Swift’s £12 million Rhode Island home, the unlikely pair announced their fledgling relationship by means of their oh-so-photogenic first date.
As the conspiracy theorists point out, it took place in surroundings that, while romantic, were also very public.
This is a recurring theme with Taylor Swift, 26, whose numerous highprofile dalliances have been conducted with maximum pizzazz and in places such as New York’s Central Park, where as any self-respecting celebrity knows, you are pretty much guaranteed to get your picture taken.
It’s all rather at odds with Swift’s oft-repeated desire for a private life.
But then every famous man she’s dated — and they’ve all been famous — has been with her when he is at the peak of his power, plastered relentlessly all over her social media accounts. And then the relationship has ended, which cynics suggest generally occurs after she has experienced enough heartbreak to write a hit song about it.
It has perhaps helped Swift, a workaholic control freak who had her first record contract aged 14, attain global media dominance and amass a £170 million fortune.
True to form, every moment of her ocean-side canoodle with Hiddleston, currently angling to be the next James Bond, just happened to be captured in pin-sharp detail.
See him offer the lady his jacket! Observe how their sunglasses clink as they kiss! Watch them seal their mutual attraction by taking matching selfies! You have to wonder what on earth Tom Hiddleston, who has a double first in Classics from Cambridge, has got himself into.
An onlooker revealed: ‘They were all over each other — hugging and kissing — even though there were 20 people on the beach. They looked like any young couple madly in love without a care in the world.’
A source close to Taylor said on Wednesday: ‘Tom has been courting Taylor since they met — he sent her flowers. She’s been won over.’
The couple — should we call them Hiddleswift or Swiddleston? — met in New York at the Met Gala, now a by-word for vulgarity, on May 2.
TAYLOR — attending without boyfriend Calvin Harris — wore a custommade Louis Vuitton silver dress which made her look like a space princess; Hiddleston was faultless in tails. Hiddleston said: ‘I was on a table with Taylor and she said, “The thing about these parties is nobody gets up to dance.” She said, “If they play I Can’t Feel My Face we have to get up and dance.”
‘I said, “I’m in, of course, let’s go. Absolutely.” We jumped up and started dancing — which was great.’
Exactly one month later, on June 2, Calvin Harris announced that their ‘magical’ 15-month romance was over.
Calvin tweeted: ‘The only truth is that a relationship came to an end & what remains is a huge amount of love and respect.’
Just before this week’s pictures were released on Wednesday night, however, Calvin deleted that tweet, along with many pictures of his former girlfriend and wrote: ‘Oh boy, it’s about to go down,’ followed by images of three skulls. You get the impression that he wasn’t happy.
Meanwhile, Swift’s new boyfriend is suddenly even more famous than he was at the start of the week.
He may want to avoid googling himself, though, as not everything which is said is entirely nice.
Recurrent themes among the speculative verdicts are ‘painfully staged’ and ‘completely fake’.
You can see why: the images of them are so beautifully composed they could virtually be movie stills.
The credit on the pictures is TheImageDirect.com rather than one of the big paparazzi agencies. It’s a business that specialises in selling pictures on for photographers who don’t want to pay big agency fees. Is this suggestive of an inside job? Also, probably by pure coincidence, just before the pictures came out, Tom Hiddleston’s publicist Luke Windsor, started to follow Taylor Swift’s PR, Tree Paine, on Twitter.
It wouldn’t be the first time that Taylor Swift has been accused of milking her private life for fame.
For although she told Vogue magazine this year that her romance with Calvin Harris was ‘ the one thing that’s been mine about my personal life’, she played out the romance on social media — which sources say was a factor in their break up.
Even on their romantic first-year anniversary break in March she was at it, posting picture after picture of them on the beach together.
The source said: ‘He is very quiet and doesn’t like all the hoopla or having cameras in his face all the time. He’s a private guy.’
And a preference for privacy turns out to be the very last quality any boyfriend of Taylor Swift should have.
For the one thing this ruthless princess of pop apparently looks for in a man is a public profile to match her own — and a career firmly in the ascendant. One-time country singer Swift had her first famous boyfriend when she was only 18: Joe Jonas of boyband The Jonas Brothers, then at the peak of their fame.
The band, made famous by a show on the Disney Channel, sparked global pandemonium when they released a film Camp Rock, over the summer of 2008.
With seemingly perfect timing, she dated Joe between July and October of that year.
In an appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres show soon afterwards she said he had dumped her in a brutal phone call. ‘It was like, a record, I think, for how quick. I looked at the call log — it was like 27 seconds.’
The audience booed — and her fame received a welcome boost with her new persona as Little Miss Heartbreak.
Her next famous boyfriend came in the form of U.S. actor Taylor Lautner. Lautner was, again, at the height of his success, thanks to his role as Jacob Black in the Twilight films.
The first film came out in November 2008. Months later, she paraded the young male star firmly on her arm.
Again, it wasn’t a long romance, and the couple parted in December 2009. But not before a series of photogenic date nights. And the ex was written into a song — on this occasion an apology track called Back to December.
Why did she apologise? It seems that Swift dumped him having fallen for singer John Mayer. Cue another public romance, including several duets at concerts.
After their split in February 2010, the heartbreak was again used for her own advantage in her song Dear John. It included the line: ‘Don’t you think I was too young to be messed with? The girl in the dress cried the whole way home.’
Mayer, appalled, called it ‘ cheap songwriting’ and said: ‘It was a lousy thing for her to do.’
Maybe so, but never mind the heartbreak, for Swift soon had yet another high-profile hottie as a boyfriend.
Enter actor Jake Gyllenhaal, on the cusp of movie greatness, having been nominated for an Oscar for his role in Brokeback Mountain in 2006. Once again, it was a fleeting love — lasting a mere two months — from October 2010 to December 2010.
With echoes of this week’s images, their romance was announced via a staged looking set of pictures of them strolling arm-in-arm in New York.
‘Jake and Taylor in love!’ ran U.S. magazine headlines. She had just released — surely a coincidence — her third album.
In this case, it was Jake who broke up with her. Undeterred by the setback, she penned a global smash hit about him, entitled We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.
She soon had eyes for the 18-yearold scion of the Kennedy dynasty, Conor Kennedy, son of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
With Swift seemingly not content with being spotted at mere showbusiness events, this romance was elevated by photo opportunities
around the family’s Hyannis Port compound.
Perhaps warming to the notion of political power, she was even pictured visiting his late mother’s grave.
He was four years her junior, and his family said their romance was ‘very sweet’, but no one was too surprised when they broke up four months later — Kennedy was jettisoned in favour of a Harry Styles, the One Direction superstar who was the hottest young man in the world.
They were an item from December 2012 to January 2013. It is said that their fling inspired the song I Knew You Were Trouble.
Her history of publicity-soaked but brief romances has led to plenty of speculation about what is really going on in her life. Is she a high-maintenance diva who thinks no man is good enough for her? Does she simply pick the wrong guy, time and again?
One website, Queerty, suggests that her relationships are a cover for her lesbianism, but this gossip is surely malicious and far-fetched.
It may be worth noting, though, that Hiddleston has endured just the same kind of gossip. He has addressed the issue by saying: ‘I have many, many gay friends and I am thrilled that there are fans.’
So what can he expect? Will a romance with Swift help him land that coveted role as James Bond — or will the producers be put off by this oh-so-unlikely pairing?
One thing is certain. Miss Swift has manoeuvred herself back into the spotlight again.