Face of Nation : After moving to Los Angeles five years ago, the power couple have continued to grow their influence, while continuing to fade from the public eye.
Lara Worthington, nee Bingle, formerly lived a life of nude photo scandals and tabloid drama. Sam Worthington made headlines when he was sued for punching a paparazzo in 2014, yelling at him to stay away from his “wife”.
But in the company of one another, the two have shielded their life from the public and continued to build their careers.
It’s a difficult and powerful move to pull off.
“I really take pride in protecting my family,” Lara told Stellar earlier this year.“It’s not just about me anymore. I have less of a voice and I’m happy about that because sometimes there’s too much talk.
“In fact, Sam doesn’t even have social media, and if mine was to go away tomorrow it wouldn’t leave an imprint on my life. All my friends are my real friends — I don’t need to talk to them through Instagram.”
The Worthingtons moved to Los Angeles five years ago, despite Sam previously telling Digital Spy that he would “never live in LA”. Why?
“I hate that place,” he said in 2012.
Worthington was living in Hawaii at the time, a location he’d chosen because he loved the relaxed atmosphere.
A year later, what’s believed to be the first photo of Sam and Lara surfaced on Natalie Imbruglia’s Instagram.
More posts followed, including a post from Bingle of Sam in the back of a car in New York City, and a post from Sam, of Bingle in bed.
But in recent years the couple have toned down the public displays of affection, and according to Lara, Sam no longer uses social media, preferring instead to focus on his family and his career. He is currently slated to appear in a stack of films over the next few years, including two sequels to James Cameron’s blockbuster Avatar.
Sam also has spoken in recent years about finding his faith, saying he came to religion later in life.
“I came to religion very late, in my 20s and it was never something that was thrust on me as a young kid,” he told The Christian Post in 2017.
“It’s something that I discovered, and my choice.
“I think so many people are afraid of using the word ‘God.’ It’s become so misused sometimes but we shouldn’t shy away from it. When I pray, what I get back is this comfort, this love, that (says) ‘I’m OK and I’m not alone.’”
He said he was handed a Bible at a time when he was “angry” and told to read the book for “guidance”.
“(Around that time) I was lucky enough to travel around the world and I ended up going to different churches. I would first notice the architecture but then I started to notice how we’re all so connected through faith,”
Encouraged by her mother to begin modelling as a young teen, Lara dropped out of school at 16 and moved to Italy in aid of her career.
In 2006, she was the star of a major advertising campaign launched by Tourism Australia, created by creative company M&C Saatchi, which featured Lara, walking along the beach asking, “So where the bloody hell are you?”.
The highly publicised ad, which cost $180 million dollars to produce, was aired in the UK, US, Japan and New Zealand, and received an enormous amount of international attention after it was criticised for showing beer and later banned for having foul language, for the use of the words “bloody hell”.
The UK Advertising Standards Authority later warned Tourism Australia to refrain from using foul language in future. A cleaned up version of the ad was presented where Bingle asked, “So where are you?”.
Reports surfaced of Bingle dating Aussie cricketer Michael Clarke in 2007, and the pair became engaged in 2008. Bingle was just 20 at the time.
But in 2010, the pair announced they had called off their engagement after being hounded for days by media speculation of a split, spurred by claims published in a magazine alongside photos of a distressed-looking Lara, taken in the shower.
“They ask the media to respect their privacy during this difficult time. No further comment will be made.’’
The split was announced in the wake of a nude photo leak, that Lara attributed to her ex from 2006, footballer Brendan Fevola.
According to Lara, she was 19 when she met Fevola in 2006 on the set of The Footy Show, and had no idea when they met that he was in a relationship, or married.
When Fevola’s marriage dissolved following the affair, his former wife claimed Lara was “obsessed” with Fevola, and referred to her as a “home wrecker” in interviews with A Current
Affair.
The pair had a brief affair, and Fevola shared photos of a topless Bingle among his AFL teammates, which were later published along with claims her relationship with Clarke was on the rocks.
Lara was forced to defend herself against the “home wrecker” claims, saying the first she knew of Fevola being in a relationship was when she heard a baby crying in the background of one of their phone calls.
“We spoke a lot on the phone because he was in Melbourne and I was in Sydney. We were talking one day and I asked: ‘What’s that noise’, and he said: ‘It’s my baby’, and then it all came out,” she told Perth Now.
“I’m only 19. I was young and single and I thought I had met a guy who was really nice,” Lara said at the time.
While Lara initially planned to sue Fevola when the nude photo leaked, she suspended the legal action, telling Woman’s Day despite feeling “humiliated” and “violated” she was “determined to move on with her life”.
In 2012 — the same year Lara’s short-lived Kardashian-style reality TV show Being Lara Bingle also starring her best friend Hermione Underwood, brother Josh and mother Sharon was aired on Channel 10 — another nude photo scandal hit the tabloids.
Just months before the show went to air, A Current Affair aired blurred photos of the model that were being shopped around by BIG Agency.
A Current Affair had aired the photos, without purchasing them, in a segment aiming to “expose” the dirty tactics of photographers invading the privacy of celebrities like Lara.
A freelance photographer took the photos for BIG Agency, owned by Darryn Lyons, who sent a bill to A Current Affair after the program was aired, according to The Herald Sun.
But the Executive Producer of ACA, Grant Williams, refused to pay Mr Lyons, saying taking nude photos of Lara in her home meant all bets were off.
“My job is to expose grubs who think it is all right to take photos of naked women through bedroom windows, not to do business with them,” Mr Williams said.
“Darryn is absolutely kidding himself.”
Lara herself pointed out that it was disturbing for her to be photographed naked inside her home.
“There should be a law against someone shooting inside your house … it’s just not right,’’ she told 2Day FM.
“(I) was pulling the curtains across in my bedroom, which is at the front of the house … It was actually inside not on my balcony, I’ve gone and put black screens up on my windows and I don’t open the blinds.
“I found out (about the photos) yesterday morning and everybody went into ground control to work out what to do and stop it,” she said.
At the time, Lara and Mr Lyons owned a restaurant together in Torquay. They sold the restaurant the following year.
Mr Lyons claimed that Lara was notified of the pictures, “and her manager Hermione Underwood asked to see a contact sheet last week, so for them to say they had any objection to the pictures seems a bit stiff to me. They didn’t come back with an objection,” he said at the time.
After getting married at a very small and private ceremony, with less than ten guests, in 2014, Lara and Sam Worthington moved to the US.
During Lara’s promotional interviews for her new tanning brand, The Base, she skirted around questions relating to her personal life.
“I was quite bored talking about my personal life, to be honest,” she explained.
During her two pregnancies, Lara mostly went quiet, mostly posting generic travel shots“Both Sam and I, we understand that it’s a by-product of our profession and that’s fine, but I think when you’re taking photos of my son without my permission, that’s when it’s unacceptable,” Lara said in her recent Stellar interview.
“I don’t have to put on any facade with him, and moving to America has meant we’re able to live a really normal life.
“In fact, he’s more normal than me,” Lara said of Sam.
