Sacha Baron Cohen is a very funny man, so when he said that he was ‘hard launching’ his midlife crisis by unveiling a rippling new physique on the cover of Men’s Fitness magazine this summer, it seemed like just another gag.
However, a few months on and the Ali G and Borat star does indeed appear to be undergoing something of a reinvention.
For example, he was spotted recently swapping phone numbers on an LA pavement with a glamorous influencer who is just under half his age.
Baron Cohen, who is 54, was photographed saying goodbye to Kelsey Calemine, 26, on Friday after apparently getting her to put her number in his mobile phone. He then walked her over to an Uber when it arrived.
It has to be said this was a completely innocuous farewell – there wasn’t even a kiss on the cheek – but Baron Cohen, who announced his split from wife, actress Isla Fisher last year, was apparently ‘flirtatious’ with Calemine inside a Hollywood nightclub. He was there to celebrate the birthday of a friend in the entertainment industry.
A source said: ‘He was staring at Kelsey and then walked over and started chatting to her. Outside they were both very flirty and they didn’t stop laughing.’
This follows a dinner at a steakhouse in Beverly Hills in September with OnlyFans model Hannah Palmer, who is just 27 and whom he apparently met at a birthday party thrown by fun-loving director Taika Waititi, husband of pop star Rita Ora.
Sources close to the star explained it was just a dinner – not a date – and that he might have been giving Palmer some career advice. That she has a figure which would make Jessica Rabbit weep tears of envy is neither here nor there.
Kelsey Calemine was spotted laughing and ‘flirting’ with Sacha Baron Cohen outside a Hollywood nightclub last week
The actor has also been seen with OnlyFans model Hannah Palmer, whom he apparently met at a birthday party thrown by fun-loving director Taika Waititi
If it’s not a midlife crisis, it does rather look as though Baron Cohen has started to run with Hollywood’s fast, fun crowd – comprising Waititi, Rita Ora and friends including the actress Natasha Lyonne and hellraising model Kate Moss, all of whom were also at Waititi’s days-long 50th birthday party in Ibiza.
Meanwhile, his ex Isla Fisher is quietly reinventing herself in a mansion in north London, where she lives with their three children.
In interviews, she talks about her ‘grief’ over the end of their 14-year marriage, and about how she wept when moving into the house as a single woman. So is he really out there partying while she grieves their divorce?
Friends of Baron Cohen say it’s not fair to surmise that he hasn’t also been mourning the end of their marriage. ‘He has taken things slowly after the divorce,’ says one. ‘There is no rush on his side to be with other people.
‘He goes out sometimes, but he isn’t much of a clubbing guy. There has been a bit of dating, and a bit of going out, nothing more than that.’
In fact, I am told that there has been no serious romance for him since they announced their separation in spring 2024.
What’s more, he won’t unveil a new relationship until it’s reached a certain level of seriousness – out of respect for Isla and their children.
‘The story being told is that Sacha is prowling around nightclubs picking up hot young women but that just is not true,’ says a source.
‘He has a lot of respect for Isla and is also very conscious of the feelings of their children. That is why you have not seen him out on dates or with someone else.
‘He is a man who guards his privacy and the privacy of the family very seriously, so he is barely seen out. This means that if he’s seen anywhere near to a single woman everyone rushes to say that there is something to it. Unfortunately people presume a relationship which does not exist.
‘In this instance [with Kelsey Calemine] it was a basic, very limited bit of social interaction, nothing more to it than that.’
Nowadays, 80 per cent of women are against marriage. Why? Because women realise it’s not worth buying an entire pig just to get a little sausage
The source adds: ‘Sacha and Isla were married for a very long time and there has been a period of adjustment. If he meets someone new, then he is open to it, but that’s not where we are right now.’
I’m told that his life is in fact split between the A-list in the US and a home in London, where he spends time very quietly with his three children. ‘He splits his time and goes back and forth. He is with the kids a lot,’ says the source.
Fisher and Baron Cohen announced they’d split in a typically offbeat post in April last year, featuring the two of them in tennis outfits. ‘After a long tennis match lasting over 20 years, we are finally putting our racquets down,’ it said.
They said they were going to remain friends and released a further statement this June to say that the divorce had now been completed, and that the friendship was intact.
‘We are proud of all we’ve achieved together and, continuing our great respect for each other, we remain friends and committed to co-parenting our wonderful children,’ said the statement.
Soon afterwards the pair were photographed attending the Wimbledon tennis championships – separately. Fisher teased him on Instagram: ‘Hang on? Who’s watching the kids? @sachabaroncohen.’ That all seems friendly enough.
And yet, gossip has persisted that the divorce was ‘hell’ and that there was a ‘war’ over his £100 million fortune. Certainly, Fisher has at times seemed to encourage the view that she was taking a swipe at him.
Over the summer she posted on Instagram: ‘For all the men who say, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” here’s an update for you. Nowadays, 80 per cent of women are against marriage. Why? Because women realise it’s not worth buying an entire pig just to get a little sausage.’
And, in a more serious vein, she has opened up on the struggle of getting divorced during press interviews to promote her new movie, Now You See Me, Now You Don’t.
Last week she told NewBeauty magazine: ‘I’m not going to lie, it’s been a really challenging time. I definitely feel like there’s something about the divorce club that anyone in it understands in a way other people don’t. It’s a different grief.
Isla Fisher and Baron Cohen were married for nearly 14 years and had three children in that time
They announced their split in a typically offbeat post in April last year, featuring the two of them in tennis outfits
‘I feel like creating a new identity after your divorce is so fun, though. You get to reflect on your values and goals, explore new interests, focus on what you want and rebuild your sense of self.’
She added in another recent interview with Elle Decor about her life and home: ‘Trying to create a new life from a grassroots level, at least emotionally, has been challenging, but deeply rewarding.
‘I’m enjoying this new version of my life. I don’t need to party in my house any more. I love to get in the bath. I’ll light some candles, bring in my laptop and put on something on Netflix. That’s as exciting as it gets.’
Baron Cohen’s friend says: ‘Their relationship has been up and down like any divorcing couple. There is a lot of respect there in general. Sometimes she perhaps has a moment. Everyone here is only human.’
Born in Muscat, the capital of Oman, to Scottish parents, Fisher grew up in Perth, Australia. She was best known for her role as schoolgirl Shannon Reed in the Sydney-based Australian soap Home And Away, but went on to star in rom-com movie Confessions Of A Shopaholic, and then alongside Owen Wilson in Wedding Crashers.
Sacha, meanwhile, was born into a Jewish family and educated at the £28,000-a-year Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys School in Hertfordshire before reading history at Christ’s College, Cambridge.
He shot to fame in 1998 courtesy of his satirical ‘gangsta’ character Ali G, who appeared on Channel 4’s The 11 O’Clock Show.
Baron Cohen then went on to create the Kazakh journalist character, Borat, followed by another alter-ego, a flamboyant Austrian television presenter named Bruno.
It was, he’s said, love at first sight when he met Fisher at a party in 2001. They got engaged in 2004 and in 2007, Fisher converted to Judaism to prepare for their wedding. The same year, their eldest daughter was born, and three years later the couple married in Paris.
In 2020 they relocated from America to Sydney, but moved the following year to Perth on Australia’s West Coast, where her family live, to escape Sydney’s strict Covid lockdown rules.
The move wasn’t permanent, however, and Baron Cohen struggled with the marathon flight time back to London to visit his own family. At some point in 2023 they separated, though it wasn’t announced until 2024. Fisher then took up the reins of her acting career again, with a role in the Bridget Jones film Mad About The Boy. She said in an interview that she had been sustained by a number of close female friendships.
Baron Cohen, who hasn’t given an interview as himself – rather than in character – in a couple of decades, has mostly sunk out of view, at least until his recent sightings in LA. That’s just the way he likes it.
One old London friend compares him to the ‘genius of Peter Sellers’, who was a famously complicated, even tormented, man – and also famously in thrall to beautiful women.
Chat show host Stephen Colbert once indiscreetly recalled his absolute eccentricity – saying he turned up in character as the Austrian fashion journalist Bruno Gerhard at a dinner party. ‘I had dinner with him at George Clooney’s house and he came dressed up in lederhosen carrying a 45-pound wheel of cheese,’ said Colbert in 2019. His guest Helena Bonham Carter, who co-starred with Baron Cohen in 2016’s Alice In Wonderland: Through The Looking Glass, laughed: ‘He needs attention, doesn’t he? He has emotional issues.’
