Celebrity News

Anna Kendrick finally opens up about a previous relationship – but who was it?

''As far as keeping it private, it isn't easy.''
Loading the player...

Isn’t it funny how there are some celebrities who seem to slide completely under the radar and manage to keep their relationships completely out of the spotlight?

Despite starring in some of the highest-grossing movies in recent years, Anna Kendrick has always made a concerted effort to ensure her own love life remains private, refusing to talk about boyfriends in interviews and never posting about them on social media.

And that’s entirely intentional.

“Well, as far as keeping it private, it isn’t easy, as you are proving right now,” Anna jokingly told a journalist when asked about her private life during an interview with Fairfax Media in 2020.

“But that’s just always how it’s been for me.”

Anna Kendrick has always made a concerted effort to ensure her love life remains private.

(Image: Getty)

But now The Pitch Perfect actress has broken her silence when it comes to her love life, as she opened up about a past relationship during a candid chat with Dax Shepard for his podcast Armchair Expert.

With naming the former partner, who she revealed she was with for six years, Anna detailed the emotional abuse she ended up experiencing during the relationship.

“This was somebody I lived with,” Kendrick said, saying that the relationship had been healthy until she noticed a big change in the partners behaviour.

“I remember telling my brother when things had first gone down, ‘I’m living with a stranger. I don’t know what’s happening,'” she said.

Kendrick recalled a time when the partner visited her on set, and she noticed he was acting “very strange” and “distant.”

But when she tried to speak to him and asking him what was going on, she didn’t get a solid answer. Anna said that he mentioned another woman eventually, but refused to discuss it further.

Anna was a guest on the Armchair Expert podcast, where she opened up about an previous emotionally abusive relationship.

(Image: Instagram)

“The next year of my life became, ‘No, I didn’t;’ ‘It was nothing;’ ‘I shouldn’t have said anything,'” she recalled of any attempts to broach the topic again, noting that even though she wanted to “work on” their relationship, he became “increasingly hostile” to her.

The actress ended up blaming herself for his changed behaviour.

“It was so alarming, and it was so much easier for me to assume I was crazy or I was doing something wrong,” Kendrick said on the podcast.

She was unable to get any help for her partner as he never addressed that he had been acting badly, and she no longer felt safe asking about it.

“It was hard for me to recognize this as an abusive relationship because it didn’t follow (the normal) trajectory,” she said. “This is unusual that this is six years of very happy, loving relationship and then an overnight shift.”

ANNA’S DATING PAST (that we know of…)

BILL HADER

For a reported two years, Kendrick was said to be in a very low-key relationship with Saturday Night Live and Barry star Bill Hader, that ended around June 2022.

According to a January 2022 report by PEOPLE, Anna and Bill have been dating “quietly for over a year”.

“They met years ago. She’s hosted Saturday Night Live and they’ve done a movie together, but they got together well after the movie,” a source told the publication.

“They are both very private people, and with the pandemic it was easy to keep it quiet. They’re both hysterical so they must keep each other laughing all of the time. She’s really, really happy.”

Anna and Bill starred in 2019 Christmas movie Noelle together. Bill previously dated actress Rachel Bilson – they amicably broke up six months after making their relationship public at the 2020 Golden Globes.

Anna was said to have dated Bill Hader for two years.

(Image: Getty)

BEN RICHARDSON

Anna was previously in a relationship with British cinematographer Ben Richardson that begun in February 2014.

While she never confirmed exactly how they met, Ben worked on the 2013 indie film Drinking Buddies, which Anna also starred in, so it’s likely their romance began on set then.

Ben, who also worked on the hit film The Fault In Our Stars, reunited with Anna again for work purposes in the 2014 movie Happy Christmas.

Since they officially started dating, the pair were never been photographed on the red carpet together and abstained from posting pictures of one another on Instagram. (Ben’s page just features lots of lovely landscape photographs).

However, there are a few group pictures of the couple attending press events for Happy Christmas and Drinking Buddies swirling around online.

(L-R) Ben Richardson, actor Mark Webber, Anna Kendrick and director Joe Swanberg at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival to promote their movie Happy Christmas.

(Image: Getty)

Spotted! Anna and ex-boyfriend Ben pictured during a rare public outing.

(Image: Getty)

Anna, who has previously been linked to her former co-star Jake Gyllenhaal and UK director Edgar Wright (they dated from 2009 until 2013), was in 2019 forced to clear up rumours she was romantically linked to hockey player Anthony Beauvillier, after he cheekily tweeted her with a simple message – “Hi” – on Boxing Day.

Anna’s fans got in on the action, jokingly tweeting made-up stories of Anthony’s heroism, pretending to vouch for his good character.

“Remember Beau when you saved me from a burning building, cooked me a 7 course meal and taught me 8 languages , that was a great day,” one fan tweeted.

Another wrote: “Beau, thank you again for saving all those kittens at that animal shelter in the Bahamas when the Hurricane hit. Still amazed that you swam to Miami with them on your back.”

And Anna’s reply to the social media storm was gold too.

She tweeted: “These replies have been my entertainment for the last two days. Thank you all for regaling me with the true tales of this man’s heroism.”

And as for Anna’s current romantic status? That has been kept private – as expected. We’ll have to wait to hear from a ‘well-placed source’ to get the latest on her love life.

WATCH: Anna Kendrick on her book ‘Scrappy Little Nobody’

Loading the player...

Related stories