Joe Alwyn is ensuring that his previous romance with Taylor Swift doesn't eclipse his acting career. The actor from The Favourite mentioned that he compartmentalizes discussions about their past to a separate space.
“I’ve aimed to concentrate on what I can actually control,” Joe, 33, mentioned during an interview with The Guardian, published on Sunday, January 5. He was responding to whether he was concerned that people would focus more on his time with Taylor, 35, rather than his acting accomplishments. “From the start, I’ve tried to emphasize what’s important to me: friends, family, work. So, the external noise, like many public figures, I just try to ignore.”
The British actor emphasized that having a strong support system of family and friends, along with real experiences in life, helps him stay grounded.
“If you don’t have that, and you let all the external factors influence you and your actions, you end up being controlled by them. That’s a pretty messed up way to live,” Joe elaborated.
Joe and the “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” singer began their relationship in 2016, soon after his role in Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, which was his first brush with real fame, elevated further by dating Taylor, a global pop sensation. The first rumors about their relationship emerged when The Sun reported about them in May 2017. However, when Taylor released her album Lover, a diary entry dated January 2017 seemed to verify their timeline.
“I’m mainly hiding out in London, trying to shield us from the harsh world that just wants to destroy what we have,” Taylor wrote. “We’ve been together for 3 months now, and no one has discovered it.”
The stars of Kinds of Kindness and Taylor were famously discreet about their relationship.
Jackson Lee / Getty Images“Personally, I don’t think it’s something that I should put out there for dissection by people who don’t understand it, and it’s simply not theirs to own,” Joe shared during a September 2018 interview with People.
In April 2023, it was announced that Taylor and Joe had ended their relationship just a month after she started the Eras tour.
“They shared a lot of common interests and fell in love in a protected environment while she was staying away from the public eye during Reputation,” a source revealed to People at the time. “When the pandemic began, they were quarantined together and managed to nurture their relationship within this secluded context. However, outside of this environment, he never truly got to ‘know’ her.”
By September 2023, Taylor had begun seeing her current partner, Travis Kelce, after his initial attempt to give her his number at her Kansas City concert was unsuccessful. Eventually, they reconnected and have been openly sharing their relationship with the public since then.