Has Kylie found love with a hunky public schoolboy 20 YEARS her junior?
At first glance he is just another identikit heartthrob churned out by the Kylie Minogue boyfriend conveyor belt. tall, dark and handsome, he has perfect white teeth and muscles to shame a professional boxer.
Joshua sasse, it seems, is more than capable of holding his own against Kylie’s stellar line up of ex-lovers. Yet while Olivier Martinez was a Hollywood star, Michael Hutchence a bona fide rock god and Andres Velencoso an internationally famed model, young Master sasse is, by comparison, all but unknown.
But as he strolled through Chelsea this week, a protective arm around the Australian pop princess, it was with a self-confidence which belied his relative anonymity.
that won’t surprise his nearest and dearest. for in stark contrast to those who have gone before him, Joshua seymour sasse’s exotic background is as impressive as his chiselled good looks.
the freshly minted couple met two weeks ago filming television series Galavant. Joshua plays the lead character in a show that is an unlikely — but hugely popular — combination of Arthurian swashbuckling and musical theatre. ‘Monty Python’s spamalot meets the Princess Bride,’ was the verdict of one admiring critic.
Kylie, her bosom squeezed into a corset for a guest role as a coquettish maiden, was bowled over by the young star. such is her enduring allure that the 20-year age gap (she’s 47 to his 27) disappeared in a puff of smoke.
How serious the dalliance proves is up for debate. spokesmen for both stars declined to comment but their burgeoning relationship is an open secret among cast and crew. And as one impeccably placed source told the Mail this week: ‘it’s early days, but who says no to Kylie?’
One thing all were agreed on was that Kylie won’t be bored as long as she is with Joshua.
‘He takes after his father, in that he is a real dreamer and a hugely passionate, artistic guy,’ the friend told us.
‘When he was younger some people thought he was a bit pretentious. He l i kes to use fancy language and has always looked after his appearance, but once you get to know him you realise that’s just Josh. One thing he has i n common with Kylie is boundless ambition.’
for Kylie’s part, it doesn’t take a genius to spot the attraction. since her highly publicised liaison with Hutchence, the INXS singer who later took his own life in 1997, she has always had a penchant for the tall, dark and handsome type.
LONG-TERM relationships ensued with model James Gooding, and actor Martinez, with whom she lived in Paris while recuperating from breast cancer. More recently she was with spanish model Velencoso but that fizzled out just as gossip columns predicted wedding bells.
On Joshua’s side, it is a case of a teenage crush made flesh. Kylie’s i nfamous advertisement f or Agent Provocateur, banned from TV for its provocative content, came out when he was 14 and spawned a teenage obsession. friends say Kylie was one of his favourite pin-ups at school.
suggestions he is only involved with an older star for publicity are wide of the mark, however. While his drive is unmistakable (he has made no secret of his ambition to crack Hollywood), it is founded more on his extraordinary family background than a thirst for fame.
A glance at his instagram page gives a vital clue — an i mage of a handsome, brooding figure captioned: ‘Papa sasse.’
this is Dominic sasse, Joshua’s late father and the man he spends his life attempting to live up to.
in all the interviews and profiles written since Joshua began attracting serious attention through starring roles, first in the thandie Newton TV thriller rogue and more recently in Galavant (currently filming its second series for American network ABC), there are only fleeting references to his early childhood spent in Nepal.
in fact, Nepal holds a much greater significance than that. for it was in the hills surrounding Kathmandu that his father, a poet hailed by critics as reminiscent of ‘a young tennyson’, died in a plane crash. Joshua was just four and had been shuttling between London and Nepal, where hi s parents were setting up a trekkers’ lodge.
Dominic, an incurable romantic with the body of a wrestler, was the son of a Gurkha army officer. He married Mary Macauley, a Viscount’s granddaughter, in 1978. for the next decade they lived in London, where Dominic worked in the City, but his heart was in poetry and he nurtured his passion t hrough t i me in Nepal. they had a daughter, Lydia, now 34, and five years later Joshua was born. Dominic died aged just 37, as Pakistan international Airlines flight 268 smashed into a hill, killing all 167 passengers. Lydia, who was nine, has gone on to forge a strong bond with Nepal and is a yoga instructor. At the age of four, less than three months after his f ather’s deat h , Joshua played the lead in his school’s Chri s t mas play. His family were in no doubt this was the life he want e d to pursue.
six years l ater Mary remarried, while Joshua f oll owed in his well-heeled parents’ footsteps by going to boarding schools — four years at shrewsbury, then sixth form at Hurtwood House, surrey. One f ellow pupil remembered him t his week as ‘a hugely popular guy, always surrounded by women’.
‘He’s easily bored, which is typical of someone so creative. He always had t he main part in school productions and was part of a bunch of people who sat around singing and playing guitars.
‘there’s a vain streak in him. He used to wear hairbands and a long, hippy-type necklace which he said was good for his karma.
‘He was hot, but he’s got even better since he hit his 20s. i’m not surprised Kylie went for him. i’ve never known a more popular bloke.’ there were the inevitable scrapes. At one party thrown by a school-friend, his nose was accidentally broken by Kenney Jones, the drummer for the faces and the Who. He has dined out on the story ever since. Joshua joined Cygnet training theatre in exeter before his breakthrough came in 2010, with the role of sky in the West end production of Mamma Mia. As one cast member puts it: ‘He was in his element — great voice, great moves, great actor and a great body. At the time he had a reputation as a bit of a lothario, but he was a l ways t he perf ec t gentleman. He’s always had this supreme self-confidence which you can’t help admire.
‘As for whether he’s a guy for the long term, i’m not so sure. His career comes first and i can’t see him settling down for a while yet.’
Perhaps not what Kylie wants to hear, but Joshua has all but vacated his flat in east London in favour of a Los Angeles apartment.
Galavant, the series that has made him a big name in TV is, as yet, only broadcast in the U.s. and there are no plans to screen it here.
Yet despite embracing Hollywood’s obsession wi t h health and fitness — he has been living on turkey breasts and spinach while working out four hours a day — Joshua remains wary of the Los Angeles life.
He i s obsessed with poetry and reads little else, besides the scripts now sent to him on a daily basis. His social media is littered with quotations from his favourite writers.
He HAs also stayed close to his mother, who married the artist Jonathan Heale in 1998. Joshua, a regular at fashion shows, describes his stepfather’s penchant for jackets and brogues as ‘a huge influence’.
‘But my style icon is unequivocally Prince Charles,’ he told one interviewer. ‘i love tailoring.’
All of which sums up the intriguing mix of influences which makes Joshua an irresistible proposition. He is a hippy who likes nothing better than a well cut Prince of Wales check.
His stepfather breeds Black Welsh Mountain sheep and sells his art to, among others, the Duchess of Cornwall, while his father was sufficiently blue-blooded for Viscount Windsor to read at his funeral.
Yet he is just as comfortable playing American football with rapper snoop Dogg or sitting next to Hollywood star Christian slater at New York fashion Week.
in the words of the long-standing family friend: ‘Josh can turn his hand to anything.’
And, perhaps, the romantic young actor will be the man to finally make Kylie lucky in love.