Bridget Moynahan a star in public with a private life

Beautiful but maddeningly aloof, Irish American actress and model Bridget Moynahan has had a two-decade high profile career filled with enough drama and heartache to last a lifetime. But don’t expect to read about it in the papers.

If reality TV has taught us anything it’s this -- being a celebrity really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Oh, there are the perks of course, like top-flight hotels, international travel, champagne breakfasts, designer threads and really outrageous shoes. But when the trade off includes your contentment, your love life and even your sanity, well it loses its fascination a bit, doesn’t it?

Just ask Bridget Moynahan, 40, star of Ramona and Beezus, the pleasantly diverting family film co-starring her old Sex and the City buddy John Corbett, which opens this week.

On the surface Moynahan seems to have it all, beauty, brains and a lucrative two decade career as a model and an actress. Ah, but underneath.

Breezing into the swank foyer of the London Hotel in New York, Moynahan’s permanently arched eyebrows convey one simple message -- get me outta here. If fame is a drug, it looks like Moynihan’s ready for rehab.

Maybe it’s just her Irish American values asserting themselves.  There’s a case to be made that her unusually aloof manner is just an example of a longstanding and quite sensible Irish mistrust of too much sweet talk. Or maybe, as I suspect, Moynahan grown to hate the celebrity side of being a celebrity.

Either way, her strained expression suggests she’d rather be potholing in Wales, or pony trekking across the Himalayas, anything -- anything -- other than meeting the press.

It’s enough to make you wonder why she bothers. If being a famous actress is such a drag, why do it? It’s not as if there aren’t a thousand other starlets just waiting to prise the Manolo Blahnik’s from her feet.

But today as she sweeps through the London Hotel like a latter day Grace Kelly, there’s a distinct iciness to her manner that’s not so much classy as cross. Instead of taking the focus off her, it makes you wonder about her and her life to date. Certainly she’s had her fair share of provocations.

Take Tom Brady, for example. From the moment Moynahan walked into the convention center room of the hotel Brady’s name has hung over the proceedings as if it had been set there in neon lights the night before.

Moynahan dated the famous Super Bowl winning New England Patriots quarterback from 2004 until late 2006, when he left her three months pregnant for the Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen, who he since married and had a child with.

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