Do you have what it takes to date a celebrity?

Ever wished you could be Adam Brody’s girlfriend? Join the club. But before you make your move, we find out what it’s really like to call a celebrity your boyfriend from a girl who dated one for three years.

Adelaide uni student Bianca*, 24, has the kind of good fortune that can drive the insecure among us to do things we’re not proud of. She’s smart, she’s cute, she’s well connected – oh, and she dated a guy who was the kind of famous that had him featured in Girlfriend every issue.


Stars align

So how’d she score such a coup? The same way most of us meet our boyfriends – through a friend. It was Bianca’s connections that brought them together - her cousin was friends with his manager, and got her a backstage pass at a promo gig in the States. “We were both really young – I was 16 or so. He was just a nice, fun guy and obviously I thought he was gorgeous, because that’s half the reason I was there,” she says.

“If it had just been one of those regular fan meetings, it probably wouldn’t have happened the way that it did.” As it did happen, the two of them hit it off, exchanged numbers and agreed to stay in touch when Bianca went back to Australia.

Over the next couple of months, things escalated. “It seems kind of pathetic since it all happened over the phone, but we agreed that there could be something to it.” They decided that when the chance to see each other next arose, they would take it up and see what happened.

Bianca returned to the US, where she stayed at his house and they kissed for the first time. “I was so excited. Girls always say, ‘Oh, to me he was just another guy,’ but to be honest, to me he wasn’t just any other guy on the street. I thought he was absolutely fantastic,” she says.


Keeping it quiet

But it wasn’t all butterflies and sweet kisses. His celeb status started to put a strain on things: he couldn’t pick her up from the airport when she visited, and, when Bianca was backstage at a concert, she was treated like any other fan. He was also under strict instructions not to let on to anyone that he had a girlfriend.

“He would say in interviews that he didn’t have a girlfriend, which would cause problems because I hated being treated like I didn’t exist,” says Bianca. “It was hard to keep a secret. I was so excited.” But, she reasons, “If I had told my friends they wouldn’t have believed me anyway.”

Scoring the guy of your dreams and not being able to tell anyone kinda takes that gloss off things, don’t you think?


Crazy fans

Then there are the fans. Cameron Diaz might be able to get away with dating the guy every girl wants (being a girl every guy wants probably helps), but most girls can’t. Even big-time celebs like Kirsten Dunst and Kate Bosworth have gotten hell because of the boys they date.

Bianca was a fan herself before she started dating her boyfriend, and continued to hang out on online message boards after. “Initially I thought it was kind of fun because I knew stuff that the other fans didn’t know, but when you have to keep the whole thing to yourself it just becomes tedious,” she says.
“And his fans were horrible. They hated anyone who had any connections to the band. It was almost like they had an inbuilt girlfriend-seeking radar. They would stare and bitch, and they weren’t very nice.” While her boyfriend’s inbox was filled with fan mail, Bianca was bursting with hate mail. “There were constantly people who thought they’d seen me backstage or had seen us kiss on the tour bus. They gave me hell,” she says.


The glam factor

Forget glitz and glamour - the secret girlfriends of celebrities stay out of the limelight. “I would go to an after party, but I would never be on his arm as his date to the Grammies or whatever. I’d be somewhere else watching it,” Bianca says.

The relationship ended after three years due to the double whammy pressures of secrecy and long distance. “I wanted him to be there to hug or kiss or just say goodnight. I was dealing with time differences and his busy schedule, while also trying to live a normal life – it was hard.”

Still, she doesn’t have any regrets. “He was really lovely. He was romantic and would write little songs and play them to you and make you feel really special… and he was cute.”

Nowadays, Bianca has boyfriend who lives in the same country and who she says she wouldn’t swap for anything. Still, she does occasionally wonder how things would have turned out if she hadn’t ended things with her first real love…

* Names have been changed.

- Rachel Hills

Published in Girlfriend, February 2007.