Camila Morrone, the 28-year-old actress now starring in the BBC's hit drama The Night Manager, has spent her entire life navigating the epicentre of Hollywood fame. Growing up in Beverly Hills, spotting icons like Brad Pitt in local cafes was a mundane part of her reality.
An Upbringing Steeped in Hollywood
The daughter of Argentinian actors Maximo Morrone and Lucila Polak, Camila was born in 1997. Her parents divorced in 2006, after which her mother began a four-year relationship with screen legend Al Pacino, whom Camila still calls her stepfather. Despite the glamorous connections, her childhood was not without struggle. She attended the prestigious Beverly Hills High School but witnessed her parents' financial instability as actors, which nearly deterred her from following in their footsteps.
"I saw them struggle their whole lives to be financially independent actors," she told the Los Angeles Times. "I thought: 'I'm going to go to college. I'm going to have a normal 9-to-5 job.' And of course, I ended up exactly like them."
Fame, Friendship, and Forging Her Own Path
For years, Camila's public identity was heavily shaped by her high-profile, four-year romance with movie star Leonardo DiCaprio, which ended in 2022. The pair had first met in 2008 when she was just 12, introduced by Al Pacino, a longtime friend of DiCaprio's. Insiders cited distance and demanding schedules as reasons for the split, noting there were "no bad feelings" between them.
This highly publicised relationship only intensified her drive to be recognised for her own work. "When you're an actor people will always find things about your personal life," she reflected to The Times.
Her social circle reads like a who's who of young Hollywood, featuring an A-list girl squad she calls her 'besties':
- Hailey Bieber
- Kaia Gerber
- Suki Waterhouse
"I love my girls," she said, though she joked about keeping up with their grand lives, from Suki's touring to Hailey's business empire.
Claiming Her Spotlight in The Night Manager
After a decade balancing modelling and acting, including a role in Amazon's Daisy Jones & The Six where she bonded with Suki Waterhouse, Camila proactively pursued her biggest break yet. Upon hearing the BBC was casting for a Latin character in the second season of The Night Manager, she leveraged her contacts and passionately campaigned for the part.
"I will harass a director via email and send a love story about what I feel about a character," she admitted. Her tenacity paid off, landing her the role previously played by Elizabeth Debicki, who went on to portray Princess Diana in The Crown.
The actress, who now dates music video director Cole Bennett, 29, looks back on her journey with pride. "I feel really proud of where I have come," she said, acknowledging it "wasn't her reality ten years ago." From a Beverly Hills teen wary of the acting world to a leading lady in one of the BBC's most anticipated dramas, Camila Morrone has firmly stepped out of the shadow of her famous associations to claim her own spotlight.
