From John Mayer to Orlando Bloom — and let’s not even go there with Russell Brand — Katy Perry has a history of being drawn to men who are all neckscarves, poetry and ego. It’s like she never quite got over every kooky high schooler’s fixation with artsy, brooding heartbreakers. If My So Called Life’s Jordan Catalano was real, Perry would have been all over him.
Until now, that is.
At first, the thought of Perry, 40 — a woman who once dressed as a burger for the Met Gala — dating former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sounds utterly preposterous. But when you take a look at everything Perry has been through, it starts to make sense. Power play? Not quite, at least from where we’re sitting.
Perry and Trudeau, 53, were first linked over the summer when they were spotted hanging out together in Montreal. They took it up a notch last weekend when the pair shared some PDA on a yacht off the Californian coast, with Perry seemingly confirming their romance live on stage in London on Monday, October 13, when she joked about no longer dating Englishmen. (Bloom, 48, and Brand, 50, are both British.)
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The unlikely pairing comes after years of drama for Perry. Her love life has been a rollercoaster ever since she rose to fame in 2008 but, in recent years, her career has been through some serious rough patches too. In April of this year — after her music comeback was criticized and she was mocked for taking part in the Blue Origin all-female flight to space — she described herself as a “human piñata.”
So, Perry is dusting herself off from the drama and doing what many women her age do: come out of a big, serious relationship and question everything — including the kind of men they have historically been attracted to. (Perry and Bloom, who share daughter Daisy, 5, were together for almost a decade before their July 2025 split.)
While most freshly single women in midlife probably don’t stumble across former heads of state on dating apps, they might find themselves being unexpectedly drawn to accountants and doctors or teachers; men with “boring” jobs that could represent some much-needed stability and seriousness. (Bonus points if their job title screams “kind, caring and actually able to communicate.”) Plus, a single woman’s 40s are a fun time to experiment. Without the 30-something pressure of marriage and kids, you can dip a toe into unchartered waters (ideally from a yacht) and see how it feels.
And do you know what? Quite often it feels just great — because Perry isn’t the only big star who has changed their same old dating patterns and come up trumps. After years of failed relationships with fellow actors, Jennifer Aniston is now seemingly in her most stable relationship in years. The 56-year-old is dating life coach Jim Curtis, a man full of calm and considered wisdom, who really looks like he takes care of himself.
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It’s also a blueprint modeled by Gwyneth Paltrow, who started dating writer and director Brad Falchuk in 2014 at age 42 following her divorce from Chris Martin. (The pair tied the knot in 2018.) Jennifer Garner also met her longtime love at 46, getting together with businessman John Miller in 2018, a few months out from divorcing Ben Affleck. Did these relationships start out as rebounds? Who knows — but they’re still going strong.
These midlife romances feel calm, equal and decidedly adult; more about matching fitness trackers than matching tattoos. They coparent their blended families, they support each other’s careers and, above all, they just look unassumingly content.
Perry’s attraction to Trudeau might, at first, appear like she’s just trying to check “politician” off her dating bucketlist. But it’s actually a sensible choice — one that could even defy the odds and have staying power. And while some people might think Perry represents a midlife crisis choice for Trudeau — who divorced Sophie Grégoire in 2023 after 18 years of marriage and has navigated a few career scandals of his own — don’t forget that Perry’s wacky outfits mask a gritty confidence; they are both powerful people. She’s got the eye of a tiger!
Plus, Perry has been roasted for almost every decision she’s made in the past few years, so she’s definitely in the IDGAF phase by now.
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“Please know I am OK, I have done a lot of work around knowing who I am, what is real and what is important to me,” she wrote via Instagram in April, after the space trip controversy. “I’m on a human journey playing the game of life with an audience of many and sometimes I fall but … I get back up and go on and continue to play the game and somehow through my battered and bruised adventure I keep looking to the light and in that light a new level unlocks.”
At the time, she probably didn’t know her next level would involve dating a globally famous politician. But for now, trading the bad boy energy of some of her most notorious exes for stability and emotional fluency feels hot. In Trudeau, Perry has found a man you can contemplate splitting the school run with and rely on to sort the recycling properly — even if he does man-splain carbon policy on the way.
The true test will come when the “kissing on yachts” phase is over and real life kicks in — but we have a feeling, whatever happens, Perry will be just fine.
