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Louise Thomas
Editor
Actors Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Talulah Riley have announced that they are engaged, after two years of dating.
Brodie-Sangster, who rose to fame when he starred in the 2003 romantic comedy Love Actually, aged 13, made a reference to the film in his Instagram post about the happy news.
Sharing a romantic photograph of himself and Riley in a gondola, the actor, 33, wrote: “Happy to announce that Talulah and I are engaged. Love is all around x.”
The final line is a quote from Hugh Grant’s character in Love Actually, in which the actor played the Uk prime minister. It is also the title of a song by The Troggs, which Bill Nighy’s character Billy Mack sings as a Christmas version in the movie.
Riley, 37, also posted about the engagement on her Twitter account. She shared a selfie of her and Brodie-Sangster cuddling and wrote: “Very happy to share that after two years of dating, Thomas Brodie-Sangster and I are engaged!”
The couple, both actors, first met while working on the FX miniseries Pistol, a biographical drama about the Sex Pistols’ rise to fame. They played Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren (Brodie-Sangster) and the late fashion designer Vivienne Westwood (Riley), who were a real-life couple.
After appearing in public together several times in 2021 and 2022, Brodie-Sangster and Riley made their red carpet debut as a couple at the 2022 British Academy Film Awards Gala Dinner.
They have largely kept their relationship private, but Riley opened up about how she fell in love with Brodie-Sangster in an interview with The Times in May 2022.
She said: “We hadn’t really acknowledged each other as a romantic possibility or potential until the moment that we both did.
“And it was the same moment a number of months after having worked together and been good friends.”
Riley was previously married to Tesla CEO Elon Musk. They were married twice, from 2010 to 2012, and from 2013 to 2016.
Speaking to The Independent last year, Riley, who is also an author, said she understood how “strange” it looked to have been married and divorced from Musk twice.
“But that logic made sense at the time,” she said, “I suppose the reason to get remarried was just because it felt silly to be together unmarried after having been married. You know, it’s like a habit.
“We were saying, ‘This is my husband’. ‘This is my wife’. ‘Oh wait, no, we’re not that anymore. We better be that again’. You know, it felt silly to go back to ‘This is my boyfriend’ when we’ve been married. So, we just got married again.”
Since they separated, Riley described Musk as “the perfect ex-husband” and a “great friend”.
The SpaceX founder, who recently rebranded Twitter as X, replied to Riley’s announcement on the social media platform to congratulate her and send a red heart emoji.
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