Celebrity
Bel Powley & Douglas Booth Confirmed Their Engagement In The Cutest Way
It involved football and a picnic.
Starring in the new Dolly Alderton adaptation Everything I Know About Love, Bel Powley’s latest character Birdy isn’t always lucky when it comes to relationships and selling others on her genuine obsession with John Lewis. The daughter of The Bill’s Mark Powley, she grew up in Hammersmith, London, and has previously starred in The Diary of a Teenage Girl, M.I. High, The King of Staten Island, and the star-studded The Morning Show – opposite Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Steve Carell. In the BBC adaptation of Dolly Alderton’s memoir, Powley puts in a perfect portrayal of Birdy, the settled, sensible foil to main character Maggie’s orbit of chaos. Birdy and her mates must fend off charm bracelet-gifting soft-bois wherever they go, but it begs the question: who is Bel Powley dating IRL?
While filming Mary Shelley in 2016, Powley met Douglas Booth, a fellow actor whose breakthrough moment came from playing New Romantic Boy George in 2010’s Worried About The Boy. “He was playing Percy Shelley and Elle Fanning was playing Mary; I played Claire Clairmont, Mary's stepsister. That's when we fell in love – ahhh!'” Powley told Browns Fashion. Booth has also starred in Bullingdon Club-referencing Riot Club, and the BBC’s adaptation of Great Expectations.
“We’re good at being very busy for a long period and then being able to relax for a few months without feeling guilty,” she told the fashion retailers. As to how they survived lockdown together, it was their love of food that kept them going.
“We’ve done an unbelievable amount of cooking; we’ve been around the world in 12 weeks! At the beginning, it was quite cold, so we were doing curries and dhals and a lot of Indian things. But now it’s hot, we moved continents and we’re on classic Ottolenghi summery things. It’s been great. The only thing we haven’t made is sourdough.”
In July 2021, Powley and Booth got engaged during a swoon-worthy park picnic, and Booth shared the announcement on Instagram, accompanied by a smiling selfie of the couple, and a glimpse of the romantic spread he laid on before popping the question on North London’s Primrose Hill.
Powley also shared photographs from a small celebration with friends following the proposal. “Football’s coming home…and so is my husband,” she joked, referencing England won a football match that same day in the Euros 2020. Fellow actors Florence Pugh and Josh O’Connor were among the well-wishers, passing on their congratulations in the comments section, along with musician Jessie Ware.
