The Real Reason Leo DiCaprio And Gisele Bundchen Broke Up
Gisele Bundchen was Leonardo DiCaprio's first real public love affair. Since then, he's gone on to win an Oscar and romance a slew of supermodels under the age of 25 — but he's never brought another galpal on the red carpet since splitting with the Brazilian beauty. From 2000 to 2005, they were one of the most beautiful couples on the planet. Now, he's still swinging single with his infamous posse, while she's married to Tom Brady, with whom she shares two kids. Let's take a look at the real reasons DiCaprio and the former Victoria's Secret Angel couldn't work it out.
They were too busy for one another
Possibly the biggest factor in DiCaprio and Gisele's breakup was simply not having time with one another. Gisele's father, Valdir Bundchen, told The Daily Mail, "For people in the movies and in the fashion world, their down time is very short. They have to be here, there and everywhere for work — there's a lot of pressure. For someone at the height of their career, it is very intense. Sometimes relationships pay the price."
The Mirror reported that Gisele pulled the plug on the relationship because DiCaprio was "neglecting her," and she had previously vented that "A normal person can see a boyfriend everyday." If there's anything we know about Gisele from just looking at her, it's that she's definitely not normal.
DiCaprio himself told Esquire that he's a bachelor for similar reasons. "Six months of being on location or being off in Morocco or someplace like that is not the best thing for a relationship," he said (via Life & Style). "A lot of your life is put on hold when you make movies. Everything, whether personal relationships or friendships, is put on ice when you go on location for five or six months, away from everybody."
He bored her
An insider told The Telegraph (via Vogue U.K.) that Gisele just got tired of the Titanic (1997) star. "They haven't had a big argument or anything like that. It's just that Gisele was getting a bit bored and wanted to move on."
They were both too young to settle down
Gisele said when she and DiCaprio dated, youth played a role in the split: She was 19 when they first started dating to his 25. In 2009, she told Vanity Fair (via E! Online), "We were very young, and we grew together in a lot of ways. We were just not meant to be boyfriend and girlfriend, but I respect him enormously, and I wish him nothing but the best." She also told People in 2001, "I am only 20 years old, and I have a great deal of time ahead of me."
A source close to Gisele told The Telegraph (via Vogue U.K.), "It was always a rather on-off affair anyway, and neither of them are at the stage when they want to settle down for good."
He has trust issues
DiCaprio claimed that after the success of Titanic (1997), meeting women worth dating has been hard.
He told Rolling Stone (via The New York Daily News), "I had better success meeting girls before Titanic. My interactions with them didn't have all the stigma behind it, not to mention there wasn't a perception of her talking to me for only one reason ... It was like there was a separate entity out there [after Titanic]. Not to use a James Cameron reference, but it was like being in a little bit of an avatar."
She was too old for him
At the end of DiCaprio and Gisele's relationship, the supermodel was 25 years old, which appears to be the actor's maximum cut-off age.
From 1996 to 1998, DiCaprio dated Kristen Zang; they were both 22. When he was 25 and Gisele was 19, they embarked on what became his most public relationship yet, splitting a few months after her 25th birthday. He moved on with Bar Refaeli, who was 20 when they first hooked up and 25 when they split. In 2011 DiCaprio, then 36, dated Blake Lively, then 24. In 2012, he dated 23-year old model Erin Heatherton. He dated Toni Garrn, then 20, from May 2013 to December 2014. He dated Kelly Rohrbach, but split with her after about five to six months, during which she hit 25. His most recent relationship with model Nina Agdal ended just months after she hit her own 25th birthday in March 2017.
If you're noticing a pattern here, well, you're probably right.
He hindered her career
During an off-period with DiCaprio, Gisele stopped everything to get herself in the right mental space and get over him, only to reunite later. She told Vanity Fair in October 2004, "I lost a lot of money, but all I wanted was to be with my mom and dad and my sisters. I think the hard way is the best way to learn, because it forces you to go deep inside yourself to figure things out, [and now] I am thankful for that time, because I learned so much. I had to grab myself from the bottom and say, 'Get up.' That's when I learned everything is positive, nothing is negative. Everything is growing and learning. You have to live life. You can't be scared."
They hated the media attention
Gisele was the only woman other than his mom that DiCaprio ever took the Oscars. DiCaprio has always been fiercely private about his personal life, especially since his split from this particular supermodel.
He wasn't the only party in the romance who wanted to keep their lovin' private. Gisele may have made a living posing for flashbulbs, but she was never happy about paparazzi stalking her every move outside of the controlled scenes of a runway or photo shoot. "To me, the idea of being famous is irritating," she admitted to The New York Times. "The attention is strange. Everyone has an opinion." She told People that her relationship with DiCaprio brought more scrutiny than she would have liked. "It brought a lot more attention to me, which is something I didn't feel very comfortable with," she said. "To this day I still haven't gotten very used to it."
He may have cheated on her
Page Six (via Starpulse) reported when news hit of the split that a third party was involved, though they never specified who the third party was, nor with whom the third party got entangled. However, some signs point to DiCaprio being the cheater: Gisele hinted to GQ in 2008 that she's "had [her] heart broken." A source told Fox News rather bluntly, "Gisele was tired of Leo and all his screwing around," noting that DiCaprio may have been hooking up with Sienna Miller behind Gisele's back.
She got over it quickly
While DiCaprio went on to become a serial modelizer, Gisele rebounded fairly quickly from the breakup herself. She dated pro surfer Kelly Slater just months after she and DiCaprio called it quits, but it didn't last, and the relationship wiped out after only a few months.
She also went on to marry one of the most successful football quarterbacks of all time, so it's not like she's hurting too much these days.