Joe Alwyn isn’t letting his past relationship with Taylor Swift overshadow his career as an actor. Instead, The Favourite actor said he keeps chatter about their time together “in a different room.”
“I have tried just to focus on controlling what I can control,” Joe, 33, said during an interview with The Guardian published on Sunday, January 5, when asked if he was worried people would concentrate more on his time with Taylor, 35, as opposed to his resume. “And, right from the beginning, [I] tried to focus on the things that are meaningful for me: friends, family, work, of course. So, noise outside of that, I think I’ve done what lots of people who find themselves in the public eye do, which is just try and ignore it.”
The U.K. native added that he has “great family and friends and real things in [his] life,” it’s those things that help “keep him tethered to the ground.”
“If you don’t, and if you let all of that other stuff in, and if it starts to affect you and your behaviour, you’re living from the outside in. And then you’re pretty f–ked,” Joe explained.
The “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” singer and Joe began dating in 2016, shortly after he starred in Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. His role in the movie was his first taste of true fame, and it was ramped up due to his relationship with Taylor, one of the world’s biggest pop stars. The former couple was first suspected to be dating when The Sun reported they were together in May 2017. However, when Taylor released her album Lover, she included a diary entry that was dated January 2017 and it seemingly confirmed the timeline.
“I’m essentially based in London, hiding out trying to protect us from the nasty world that just wants to ruin things,” Taylor wrote. “We have been together and no one has found out for 3 months now.”
The Kinds of Kindness star and Taylor were notoriously private about their relationship.
“For me, I just don’t feel it’s something I want to offer up to be picked apart by people who don’t know about it, and it’s just not theirs to have,” Joe said during a September 2018 interview, per People.
In April 2023, news broke that Taylor and Joe had called it quits just one month after she embarked on the Eras tour.
“They had plenty in common and fell in love in a safe bubble while she was retreating from the world during Reputation,” a source told People at the time. “Then, the pandemic hit, and they were locked down together and able to continue growing their relationship in this insulated way. But he didn’t really ‘know’ her yet outside of that bubble.”
By September 2023, Taylor had moved on to dating her current boyfriend, Travis Kelce, after his attempt to give her his number at her concert in Kansas City flopped. The two managed to make it back to one another, and have been proud to share their relationship with the world ever since.
