Love is a many-splendored thing, especially when you’re gawking at it from the outside. In this column, we examine the celebrity couples who give us hope for our own romantic futures as we try to learn what we can from their well-documented bonds.
I envy celebrities for a wide array of reasons (primarily: money! Expensive vacations they can buy with their money! Gorgeous outfits that, again, are paid for with money!), but their expectation to eventually “go public” whenever they date a new person isn’t one of them.
Unless you’re the kind of famous person who thrives on tabloid attention—which, granted, seems to be a lot of them—adjusting to your personal life becoming a matter of public interest seems rough...? This feels especially true for out LGBTQ+ celebrities like Elliot Page; if you’re already being attacked by right-wing bigots just for having the courage to be who you are, having to subject whoever you’re seeing to even a share of that scrutiny must be a lot.
Indeed, for years after he came out as trans in 2020, Page didn’t date anyone publicly. But that streak ended in Milan this week, when he and his current girlfriend—actress and comedian Julia Shiplett, who’s best known for her roles on High Maintenance and Overcompensating—hard-launched their relationship on Gucci’s red carpet. To be fair, this is old news to anyone who keeps tabs on Page’s sexily sparse social media presence; he posted a sweet selfie of himself and Shiplett posing against a rainbow-painted street during Pride back in June.
Page has had a pretty iconic dating history up until now, it must be said. He opened up about his not-so-clandestine relationship with his Juno costar Olivia Thirlby in his 2023 memoir Pageboy, writing: “We started having sex all the time: her hotel room, in our trailers at work, once in a tiny, private room in a restaurant. What were we thinking? We thought we were subtle. Being intimate with Olivia helped my shame dissipate. I didn’t see a glint of it in her eyes and I wanted that—done feeling wretched about who I am.” Before marrying his now ex-wife, choreographer Emma Portner, in 2018, Page also dated actress Kate Mara, bringing his “extremely hot and famous bisexual girlfriend” total up to impressive numbers.
It makes sense that Page chose to officially debut his relationship with Shiplett at Gucci during fashion week; he co-starred alongside Julia Garner and A$AP Rocky in a 2023 campaign for Gucci Guilty and reached for a chocolate-brown Gucci cardigan to round out his “shy, cute boy in a sweater” image at the Toronto International Film Festival that same year. Appropriately enough, Page and Shiplett both wore Gucci for their joint appearance on Tuesday, proving the age-old maxim true: the couple that dresses together stays together. I certainly hope so, anyway; mazel tov to these two clotheshorses!
