Personal Life (William Smith): Romances

Relationships

During an interview with Men's Health in 2017, Smith revealed himself to be "not really the romantic type" in his early years, stating that despite his fairly good looks and fame that rose unprecedentedly in the wake of his World Cup heroics with the United States, he never seriously considered a romantic relationship which he feared could interrupt his growing football career. Citing the publicity and media fanfare that surrounded former Manchester United and England player David Beckham following his marriage to Spice Girls singer Victoria Adams, Smith said, "Personally, I don't want that kind of attention on myself ever especially when my career was about to reach new heights and which absolutely required my total commitment. To have the paparazzi and the media always chasing after you and asking you questions incessantly just when you're coming back from a tiring match or training is something that I really don't look forward to and which I would like to avoid at all costs with whatever it takes" . In addition, Smith has also expressed his "personal annoyance" at being asked questions that relate less to football than the opposite, stating, "Quite simply, I'm a professional footballer and as such I should normally be asked questions about football rather than the ones about which woman I have been seeing recently or what restaurant did I loved going to the most. It's all just quite silly and so utterly ridiculous with the quality of questions one like myself gets on the daily".

Although a notoriously private individual, owing to his good looks and fame, Smith was frequently linked romantically to various women by tabloids and magazines with names including actresses Natalie Portman and Emily Blunt, singer Britney Spears, and fashion models Miranda Kerr and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. However, in a 2018 interview with The Guardian, Smith confirmed that he had only been in three serious romantic relationships, namely with actress Cameron Diaz, fashion model Gisele Bündchen, as well as fellow actress and current wife Anne Hathaway. Meanwhile, in an appearance on The Graham Norton Show, Smith revealed that as a teenager, he once harboured feelings for the German tennis player Steffi Graf whose beauty and sporting prowess both appealed to him greatly. In this, Smith revealed that, after becoming fairly established himself in his adult years, he planned to personally meet Graf himself out of pure passion. However, rather ironically, on her 30th birthday, the German tennis player ended up marrying Smith's uncle Prince Nelson, one of Great Britain's most formidable tennis players, thereby technically "fulfilling" his ambition of meeting Graf who is now his aunt-in-law by marriage. Meanwhile, at one point, it was also said that Smith's former compatriot David Beckham unsuccessfully attempted to set him up with one of his wife Victoria's Spice Girls bandmates Emma Bunton, better known as Baby Spice, in an effort that ultimately ended up in vain although Bunton herself later ended up marrying another English footballer named Rio Ferdinand, a former teammate of both Beckham and Smith at England and Manchester United.

Gisele Bündchen

The Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen, best known for her work with Victoria's Secret. From 2004 to 2007, she secretly dated William Smith before later marrying American football quarterback Tom Brady

Beginning in 2002, Smith would first meet Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen at the 2002 FIFA World Cup in Japan and Korea where Smith himself was one of the main stars as the young captain of the United States national team. In this, Bündchen, despite personally witnessing Brazil's shock 0-5 loss to the United States in the finals in which Smith himself scored a famous hat-trick to overcome the star-studded Brazil national team, was reportedly impressed enough by the American captain's heroics that she later proved successful in meeting Smith himself in a rare and private encounter at a high-end hotel where the United States players were staying at for the tournament. The encounter, which Smith himself later described as "very surreal" and "one-in-a-million chance", saw the two bond quickly over their shared love of football and Bündchen's own admiration of Smith's footballing skills. However, despite initial progress, the two did not quickly establish a romantic relationship given that Bündchen was still with her then-boyfriend, the actor Leonardo DiCaprio. Regardless, by 2004, amidst questions of incompatibility and bouts of depression, the couple eventually broke up, and Bündchen subsequently started dating Smith in relative secrecy with the couple said to have spent their first time together in the form of a private trip to the Scottish Highlands in the United Kingdom which Smith personally fancied for its captivating landscape and natural beauty.

Owing to their high-profile statuses and the apparent need to avoid encroaching paparazzi, the two chose to keep their relationship a closely-knit secret and away from the media and public in a choice that Smith later described as "very difficult to make but which we thought was necessary given the circumstances and our own natural need for privacy and the sort". In this, despite it being a mutual agreement, the need for secrecy soon gradually took its toll on the couple's relationship, causing them to gradually distance themselves from one another amidst career demands and the overarching need to remain tight-lipped about their romance for fear of it disrupting Smith's budding football career as was seemingly the case for the latter's famous compatriot David Beckham. Eventually, around 2007, in a much private manner, the two officially parted ways with Bündchen later marrying American football quarterback Tom Brady whereas Smith began romantically pursuing American actress Anne Hathaway. Later, during a 2022 interview shortly after her divorce from Brady, the Brazilian supermodel recounted her previous romance with Smith as "something beautiful that we could not sadly see it through all the way together", adding, "Simply put, he was very nice to me and was always steady and composed whenever an issue comes up. Unfortunately, perhaps by chance, we just couldn't see ourselves sticking together amidst all that stress and pressure that was slowly building up and demanding us to do something about our relationship. In the end, we didn't really hate each other but just thought that it would be best if we both had someone else to continue with afterward". In the meantime, Smith himself has expressed some praise for Bündchen particularly for the latter's role in "being close to me during some of my most turbulent years", stating, "At the time, even with my family around me, I just felt almost alone having to deal with all the newfound fame and pressure that suddenly came crashing down on me and she was definitely very important in making me feel otherwise and ultimately being able to overcome it". Interestingly, despite representing different types of sports, Smith and Brady are generally considered to be the most successful players and are deemed to be the faces of association football and American football respectively, a fact that led one media outlet to coyly describe Bündchen as "having left one king of football for another". In this, despite being born American, Smith has come to be mostly regarded and even largely identified himself as British, thereby making him the apparent polar opposite of Tom Brady who is also born Californian.

Cameron Diaz

Meanwhile, in 2003, sometime between the moment he first met Bündchen and the moment he later began a relationship with the Brazilian supermodel, Smith briefly dated American actress Cameron Diaz, whom he had met while attending the premiere of Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle with his mother who made a cameo appearance in the film herself as one of the original actresses of the show on which the movie is based. Describing the romance afterward as a "brief and meaningless fling", Smith revealed that while the two got on fairly well, they never seriously envisioned a serious long-term romance amidst questions of compatibility with Diaz herself later admitting in an interview that the two "did better as friends rather than lovers", adding, "We simply enjoyed each other's company, he was very friendly, gentlemanly, and a genuinely good man but we never thought of eventually becoming husband and wife or the sort in the near future". Around a decade later, Diaz married the American musician Benji Madden whose twin brother Joel Madden is married to actress Nichole Richie.

Anne Hathaway

The American actress Anne Hathaway attending the premiere of The Devil Wears Prada at the LA Film Festival in June 2006. The actress headlined the film alongside co-stars Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt

In the months after his relationship with Gisele Bündchen ended, once again in relative secrecy, Smith began dating American actress Anne Hathaway, whom he had first met while attending the premiere of The Devil Wears Prada in which Hathaway starred alongside Emily Blunt and Meryl Streep while Smith's then-girlfriend Gisele Bündchen also played a minor role in the film herself. Reportedly, after quickly striking up a good rapport with both Hathaway and Blunt, Smith, having already become gradually distant from his then-girlfriend while otherwise finding himself particularly drawn to Hathway, subsequently began seeing the American actress shortly after he officially parted ways with the Brazilian supermodel. To that end, the couple later had their first date at none other than the Scottish Highlands where Smith reportedly took Hathaway on a horseback trip exploring the hills and mountains.

In this, despite adopting a similar secretive approach from his previous relationship, by the early 2010s, Smith began loosening up somewhat, appearing alongside Hathaway and other actresses including Jessica Alba, Jennifer Garner, and Julia Roberts in the 2010 romantic comedy film Valentine's Day. Eventually, on 1 July 2012, following a secret engagement two years prior, the couple officially declared their relationship to the public shortly after the UEFA Euro 2012 Final between England and Spain at the Olympic Stadium in Kyiv, Ukraine where Hathaway publicly joined Smith and the England players on the pitch in celebration of their back-to-back European glory, making it the first time that the couple has appeared together in public. Later, on November 12th of that same year, a date that also coincided with Hathaway's 30th birthday, the couple were wedded in a private ceremony at Oheka Castle in New York, United States, with the venue itself being chosen since Smith's parents and grandparents were also previously wedded there as well. However, given that it took place during a footballing season, the wedding was mostly a low-key affair that was only attended by a select amount of guests while media presence was kept to a minimum. In 2015, the couple welcomed a pair of fraternal twins William and Anne who are named after the English poet William Shakespeare and his wife Anne Hathaway. In an ensuing revelation, it was reported that the two would carry the surname "Hathaway-Smith" supposedly to avoid confusion in the case where either one of their surnames is used which would result in either their son or daughter having the same name as either their father or mother respectively. In this, Smith himself once jokingly suggested changing his surname to "Shakespeare" to fully commit to popular comparisons between himself and the English poet, stating, "Frankly, with all the titles that I won, I'm basically the Shakespeare of football anyway". Coincidentally, Hathaway's middle name "Jacqueline" is also the given name of Smith's younger sister.

During an appearance on The Graham Norton Show, Smith candidly revealed that he initially planned on wooing English actress Emily Blunt, who was then in a relationship with Canadian singer Michael Bublé, after seeing her performance in The Devil Wears Prada which he described as both "funny" and "compelling". However, he instead ended up marrying Blunt's co-star Anne Hathaway whom he began pursuing reportedly after his younger sister Princess Alexandra, a big fan of Hathaway in The Princess Diaries, "pressured" him to do so out of her personal desire to meet the American actress herself. To that end, when asked if he would have taken a different direction in the absence of his sister's influence, Smith said, "In retrospect, I don't think being married to Anne was even a bad decision for myself. Clearly, even with my sister having a rather weird role in bringing us together, we do clearly love each other very much". Moreover, he added, "Ever since we got together, she (Hathaway) has always been a very supportive and understanding wife who knows just how to cheer me up each time". Otherwise, in a separate interview, Blunt, having been married to American actor John Krasinski since 2010, revealed that prior to her marriage, she herself once "fawned" over the former England captain but was reportedly too shy to make her own move, stating, "At the time, I wasn't necessarily the most famous and well-known actress in England which, compared to him (Smith) essentially being the most famous footballer in the world, really made me very nervous about even approaching or outright dating him because I know that I'll most likely be the new Posh Spice with all the cameras and paparazzi on me 24/7 which was something that I'm not really used to at the time". Regardless, the two are known to be very close to each other and to their respective spouses with Blunt herself serving as the maid of honour at the couple's November 12 wedding whereas Smith himself is said to be close and well-regarded by Blunt and Krasinski's two daughters whom, according to Blunt, affectionately refers to Smith as "Uncle William" and are said to be "absolutely thrilled" whenever the latter pays an occasional visit to Blunt's home as a close friend of the family. Likewise, Blunt's two daughters are generally said to be close with Hathaway's twin children.