Inside Brad Pitt’s ‘romance’ with singer Lykke Li who is 23 years younger & admits: ‘I’m so f***ed up!’
EVERYBODY needs good neighbours – and Brad Pitt is dating one of his.
The screen idol has found the perfect distraction from his divorce from Angelina Jolie by seeing singer Lykke Li.
The Swede, who at 35 is 23 years Brad’s junior, lives a few minutes’ drive from his sprawling mansion in Los Feliz, Los Angeles.
They are understood to have been together since the summer but have managed to stay out of the headlines.
A source told The Sun: “Brad and Lykke have been able to fly under the radar so easily because they’re neighbours. It’s worked out perfectly for Brad to have someone he likes living so close.”
Lykke, who once joked that she was in therapy for her “romanticism”, was seen with Brad at Hollywood restaurant Mother Wolf last week.
A separate source confirmed to The Sun: “They were dining together.”
It is more than five years since Brad and Angelina split.
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But the pair once feted as golden couple “Brangelina” remain embroiled in an acrimonious divorce.
Angelina, 46, also lives in the vicinity with the pair’s six children.
But in contrast to her and Brad’s multi-million-dollar compounds — Brad’s is four properties turned into one — Lykke shares a more modest two-bedroom, £1.3million home with her son Dion, who turns six next month.
The singer has spoken of getting high there doing “tiny bits of mushrooms” and gazing at her garden.
Despite the age gap — Lykke was starting primary school while Brad was making fans swoon in 1991’s Thelma And Louise — the pair have some common ground.
Both have experienced turbulence in their private lives.
Lykke suffered the loss of her mum in 2017. She was diagnosed with a brain tumour three weeks after Lykke gave birth to her son.
The singer said: “That whole year was really crazy. You’re having your baby then you find out your mum is gonna die.”
Her relationship with Dion’s father, music producer Jeff Bhasker, 47, descended into such drama while they were working on 2018 album So Sad, So Sexy she would “run from the studio crying every day”.
Lykke revealed: “It was a big show for everyone else,. they’re going to have tons of stories to tell. My new manager said we were the craziest — and he manages (controversial Hole singer) Courtney Love.”
‘I’d run from the studio crying every day’
The couple split before the album was released.
Lykke has said: “I’m good at relationships, just not the romantic ones. That’s why I am still in deep therapy. I suffer from roman ticism.”
Brad, 58, is still fighting a bitter custody battle with Angelina over custody arrangements for their adopted children Maddox, 20, Pax, 18, and Zahara, 17, and their three biological kids — Shiloh, 15, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 13.
After the split it was claimed there had been a row between the actor and Maddox on a private jet. Following the incident, LA family services cleared Brad of allegations of child abuse.
Brad and Lykke’s backgrounds could hardly be more different. He was raised in the US state of Missouri — “Mark Twain country” — before studying for a degree and heading to LA to become an actor.
Lykke, the daughter of musician Johan Zachrisson and singer-turned-photographer Karsti Stiege, had a more nomadic upbringing.
She studied at 11 different schools and lived on a mountainside in Portugal for five years, also passing through the Portuguese capital Lisbon, Morocco, Nepal and India.
She has had therapy for what she calls her “challenging childhood” and said: “I’m still so fed up. It could take me another 35 years to be somewhat normal.”
As a youngster she fell in love with dancing after watching the videos of pop icons Madonna and Michael Jackson.
But she dropped out of dance school at 15. Despite being branded “tone deaf” by a school music teacher, Lykke decided her future lay in singing and song-writing.
She has insisted: “Barely, I can sing — even now. Barely.” Lykke moved to New York at 19, spending her time at open-mic nights and clubs.
It was a chance to be free of what she saw as the pedestrian pace of life in her home country.
She said: “In Sweden, everyone is white, they’re beautiful, they’re tall, they’ve got money, they’ve got nice nine-to-five jobs, they have a nice steak for dinner, they have a quick shag then they go to sleep.”
Lykke revealed in 2018 that she had lost three friends to suicide in Sweden the previous year. She returned to Sweden at 21 and worked as a carer in a nursing home until Bjorn Yttling — of indie group Peter Bjorn & John — offered to produce her debut album, Youth Novels.
'Every day has been happier ever since'
Fellow Swedish pop star Robyn was an early fan, while a chance encounter with Rihanna at a party led to the Umbrella singer asking Lykke to support her on tour.
Lykke said: “I had a very low-cut top on and she said, ‘Oh, look at you with your t*tties out!’ I feel like we had some kind of connection.”
But in 2015, while touring her third album, I Never Learn, Lykke cancelled a string of tour dates in Australia and New Zealand for health reasons, including the slot with Rihanna.
She said: “I’d been on a seven-year cycle of albums, tours, heart-breaks, trying to grow up. All I wanted was to be in my f***ing bed.”
Despite four successful albums — and working with Mark Ronson, Kanye West and Drake — Lykke suffered from such nerves while promoting So Sad, So Sexy that to cope she guzzled strong spirit mezcal straight.
She said: “I don’t remember anything about it apart from having panic attacks.”
Brad stopped boozing and started going to AA meetings in the wake of his split from Angelina.
Two years ago he thanked fellow A-list actor Bradley Cooper for helping him get sober, adding: “Every day has been happier ever since.”
Gossip site Deuxmoi was first to report that rumours were swirling in her native Sweden about Lykke and Brad.
Then last week it was reported that a tipster had seen the pair at celeb haunt Mother Wolf.
In December, a source told magazine US Weekly that Brad was ready to “find that special someone to be with long-term” but that he “hates the process and how he can’t even step out for a friendly coffee without it being gossiped about”.
Brad has been linked to one other woman since the split from Angelina, German model Nicole Poturalski, 29.
They met at a Berlin premiere party for his 2019 movie Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and dated for around a year.
But with Nicole reportedly in an “open marriage” and living thousands of miles away, an insider told People magazine in October 2020: “It was never a relationship. It was a casual fling.”
Fans hoped in 2020 there might be a reconciliation between Brad and his first wife, Friends’ Jennifer Aniston, after photos emerged of the pair hugging at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
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Angelina is thought to be dating 31-year-old Canadian singer The Weeknd, real name Abel Tesfaye. They have been spotted together a number of times.
The Grammy winner fuelled rumours this month by singing on a track from his new album Dawn FM: “My new girl, she’s a movie star.”
