Lily Allen and James Norton’s Surprising First Date: A Very Unlikely Romance

Lily Allen and James Norton have seemingly struck up a very unlikely romance after being spotted on what was an apparent first date on Saturday.

The former party girl, 40, and straight-laced actor, 39, looked cosy as they watched Charli XCX perform at Lido Festival in London, after they were said to have met on exclusive celebrity dating app Raya. 

Lily ended her marriage to Stranger Things star husband David Harbour, 50, in December after four years, following her discovery that he had a secret profile on Raya. Meanwhile James is said to have split from model girlfriend Charlotte Rose Smith, 26, last month.

The new paring left onlookers ‘doing double-takes’ and its no surprise with them seeming like complete opposites, her a mother-of-two with an outspoken public persona and him a bachelor who hides behind his screen roles. 

While Lily has revealed with heartbreaking honesty that she had children for ‘all the wrong reasons’ as she searched for ‘unconditional love’. James has held off on starting a family, saying it wouldn’t be fair’ on them amid his blossoming career.

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However the unlikely lovebirds do appear to have a connection after both struggled through difficult childhoods to find success and make names for themselves. 

Pop star Lily is the daughter of actor Keith Allen and film producer Alison Owen, while Happy Valley star James started life outside the spotlight with both parents being teachers who sent their son to the £40K-a-year Ampleforth College in York – dubbed the ‘Catholic Eton’.

Speaking on her podcast Miss Me? last year, she said: ‘I think I had children for all the wrong reasons really because I was yearning for unconditional love, which I haven’t felt in my life since I was a child.’ 

Lily, who shares daughters Ethel, 13, and Marnie, 11, with her ex-husband Sam Cooper, has long been candid about the struggles she faced in childhood and how it continues to affect her today; and her fractious relationship with her father.

Soon after Lily’s birth, Keith began an affair with a brigadier’s wife who lived near the set of a film he was working on in Dorset. By 1989, the marriage to Alison had run its course and he walked out on her when his daughter was four. 

She has previously said of her childhood: ‘One of my earliest memories is of when Mum and Dad split up. We were in our council flat in Bloomsbury and Dad was saying: ‘Me and Mum are splitting up now.’

‘I was about four and I was thinking: ‘Does that mean we’ve got to look for a new dad?’ It was very hard for Mum. She was producing her first film and my younger brother, Alfie, was a difficult kid.

‘I just lived within my own brain. I had this blanket and I’d suck my thumb and watch the world go by.’

In 2015, Lily also tweeted: ‘My dad walked out on me when I was 4, I’m sick of this. My dad was at Latitude when I headlined and didn’t even come to see me. I’ve probably spent more time walking my dogs than I have with my dad my entire life.’ 

Speaking to the Guardian in 2018, she also spoke of the difficult times she experienced with her mother following the split.

When the singer was eight years old, she walked into the bathroom to find Owen on the floor with empty bottles of alcohol and pills around her, as she screamed. She was taken to rehab shortly afterwards.

Meanwhile James was the victim of vicious bullying at his swanky school, where he boarded as a red-headed, freckly child. The taunts pushed him towards the school’s theatre department, where he became a mainstay.

The son of a teachers Lavinia and Hugh the actor, he was born in Lambeth, South London, before enjoying an idyllic childhood in the market town of Malton, North Yorkshire. 

‘I had a complicated time at school. I didn’t have the greatest time,’ he admitted in 2023. ‘It wasn’t helped by the fact that I was bullied. I was quite badly bullied for five years and I was also at boarding school so I couldn’t leave.

‘But I owe that school a lot. I loved theatre, I made some good friends. There’s a magic to the place. It’s intoxicating to be part of something so big, with that atmosphere of grandeur, when you’re in such a period of flux.’

The abuse, he says, left him ‘hyper aware socially’. ‘Possibly to a fault,’ he adds. ‘I constantly critique how I’m affecting people and how I’m being judged.

His bullying experiences were so bad that he sought psychological help to get through it ‘With the help of a therapist, in a weird, perverse way I’m kind of grateful for it.

‘I’ve had a great therapist for the last four years, and it’s not from a place of drama. I’m luckily not suffering from depression or anything like that but it’s been really, really helpful in understanding what [happened to me at school].’ 

He later went to Cambridge University where he was awarded a first in Theology. 

Meanwhile on the prospect of starting a family he told The Sunday Times last year: ‘I love hanging out with kids — most of my friends have kids so I’m not quite in step with my peers — but the past few years have been the busiest I’ve been, so it would not have been fair to bring a child into that.

‘Also, the inherently unfair benefit of being a man is there is less rush. I am lucky I can have kids later, so now I’m happy, actually, with my life. I feel really excited by the choices I’ve made.’

During their date the pair were spotted enjoying alcohol free beer, with Lily having been open about her battles with addiction, meanwhile James’ previously gave up drinking for his starring role in bleak three hour long play A Little Life in 2023.

The Smile hitmaker, who is now six years into her sobriety, said how quitting alcohol and drugs was the best decision she had ever made.

In a frank new interview with The Times, Lily told how addiction for her was always a case of ‘when’ and not ‘if’ as she recalled her actor father Keith’s troubles with drugs. 

Over the years, film star Keith, 71, has spoken about his battle with substance abuse, with the publication documenting Lily’s admission that her earliest memories revolves around drink and drugs and that she’d even seen her father take cocaine.

Detailing how it was somehow inevitable that she’d follow a similar path, Lily said: ‘I think that addiction runs deep in my family, so self-medicating was going to be on the cards. For me, it didn’t really feel like an ‘if’, it was a ‘when’.”

The Smile hitmaker, who has recently become an ambassador for addiction charity the Forward Trust, also hinted how the presence of drink and drugs while growing up made her feel ‘unsafe’ as she told how the most important thing about her sobriety is that her own children feel safe.

Lily shared: ‘My kids feel safe. That’s the main thing for me. I felt very unsafe in my childhood, and my kids feel safe.’

Indeed, it is her children who help keep her on the right path, with Lily quipping that her children ‘monitor’ her AA meeting attendance.

She said her girls would often question whether she’d been to her meetings, noting that her daughters are aware that staying on the path of sobriety ‘it takes work’ and that it’s something Lily has to ‘prioritise’.

Perhaps the key to Lily staying on track for her girls is the shocking moment in her past as she hit rock bottom amidst her battle with booze.

During her interview, Lily recalled drunkenly turning up at her ex-husband’s house to confront him after learning he’d started seeing someone new, with the altercation startling her young children.

Lily said: ‘I drank myself into oblivion. I went over to his house and started screaming at him, woke the kids up, you know, really distressed the children. They remember that. And they know that I was under the influence then, and that it’s important that Mummy avoids getting into those situations.’