How White Lotus Star Leslie Bibb’s Relationship With Sam Rockwell Bloomed

While The White Lotus season three is in Thailand, Leslie Bibb’s love story with Sam Rockwell began in L.A. Read about the actress’ relationship with the Oscar winner and other cast members’ romances.

Long before Leslie Bibb was checking into the White Lotus, she was checking out Sam Rockwell in the lobby of Chateau Marmont.

“I was standing there about to have dinner with some girlfriends and somebody looked over my shoulder and waved,” the actress recalled of the 2007 meet-cute on Rosie O’Donell’s The Rosie Show five years later. “I turned around, and it was him.”

As soon as she saw the Oscar winner—who was staying at the West Hollywood hotel while filming his 2008 movie Frost/Nixon—she felt a spark.

“I just smiled,” Leslie continued. “He smiled at me, and I thought, ‘Oh no, what’s that?’ Sometimes you just get struck.”

Indeed, Cupid’s arrow had hit its target. Never mind that Leslie was just beginning to dip her toe back into the dating pool after some fizzled romances, including the end of her brief marriage to investment banker Rob Born in 2004.

“I had been going to therapy,” the Talladega Nights alum shared. “I hadn’t been really dating because I was like, ‘I’m opening the same box, and it’s still the same piece of poop inside.’ Like, the common denominator is me. So I gotta figure out why I’m picking the wrong person over and over.”

Turns out Leslie was just biding her time ’til she crossed paths with Mr. Right.

“I was like, ‘I’m ready to go out. Let’s go out. We’re going to go have dinner,’” she remembered telling her friends. “And he was the first person I met.”

Leslie and Sam went on their first date about a week later to a museum. Although, the Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri actor had scheduled a “backup date” with someone else after their outing.

“It’s true,” he said on a February 2024 episode of The Drew Barrymore Show. “She loves to remind me of that.”

But when Leslie suggested they grab drinks after their day date and Sam told her there were a few things he had to take care of first, she figured out his plan.

“She caught me,” he continued, “but then we went and got margaritas and salsa and chips.”

Sam Rockwell, Leslie BibbEric Charbonneau/Warner Bros. via Getty Images

Still, Leslie was initially serving up some noncommittal vibes.

“I was trying to be like a badass and be like, ‘Listen, I wanna lease, not own,’” the Miss Nobody star recounted in her Rosie Show interview. “‘I’m not really looking for anything right now.’”

However, she couldn’t deny their bond.

“I think three weeks later,” she admitted, “I was like, ‘I love you so much.’”

Of course, the feeling is mutual.

“She’s my beloved,” Sam raved to Us Weekly in 2018. “She keeps me laughing and we take care of each other. She’s really talented and funny herself. She reminds me of a young Mary Tyler Moore.”

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Watch: Sam Rockwell & Leslie Bibb Talk Broadway’s Return

Throughout the past nearly 18 years, the two have been costars in both life and work—appearing alongside each other in movies like Iron Man 2 and Don Verdean. However, they don’t need to tie the knot to show they’re committed to each other.

After all, Sam told The London Evening Standard in 2022, he and Leslie are “basically married. She’s in my will. I feel like we are married. We live like a married couple. I’m really proud of her.”

As for the secret to their long-lasting partnership?

“Communication,” Sam told E! News at the 2018 SAG Awards, with Leslie then adding, “Good sex” and a “healthy sense of humor.”

Of course, Leslie isn’t the only one from The White Lotus cast with a love story fans like to play on repeat as much as the show’s theme song. Check out the rest of her costars’ sweet stories.

Jason Isaacs, Emma Hewitt, White Lotus Season 3 PremiereEmma McIntyre/Getty Images

Jason Isaacs & Emma Hewitt

While Jason Isaacs‘ character Timothy Ratliff is married to Parker Posey‘s Victoria Ratliff on The White Lotus, his wife IRL is Emma Hewitt.

“Without her,” he wrote in 2020’s The Big Issue, “there is no me that I recognize or would want to know.”

Jason met the former documentary filmmaker at the University of London’s Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in the ’80s. At this point, he was battling what he called a “decades-long love affair with drugs,” which ended in 1998 when he became sober.

“When I got clean, I remember my wife saying, OK, at last, we can finally buy a home and we can have kids and get on with our lives,” Jason added. “And I said, actually, darling, I’ve just met you. What are you talking about? She said, we’ve been together for 10 years! I know, I said, and I’m really sorry, but I feel like I’ve just been born, and we have to date and get to know each other.”

When he later asked “why she’d want to be with someone who was just out of their head the entire time,” he continued, she said, “she always loved who I really was and who I really could be.”

The couple wed in 2001 and welcomed daughters Lily and Ruby.

“She decided she was going to give up a very successful career and follow me around and live, with nothing to do, in these far-flung places, and not really feel like part of the crew, in order to get pregnant,” Jason told The Guardian in 2008. “It took us a while and we had IVF, which worked first time for us both times.”

Abby Champion, Patrick Schwarzenegger, White Lotus Season 3 PremiereMichael Buckner/Variety via Getty Images

Patrick Schwarzenegger & Abby Champion

Fans have been seeing, um, a lot of Patrick Schwarzenegger on The White Lotus, but he’s been baring his soul to fiancée Abby Champion for a decade.

“It was 2015!” the model recalled to The Daily Front Row nine years after her meet-cute with the actor, who plays Ratliff son Saxon on the HBO drama. “We met through a mutual friend who I was on a date with and Patrick knew. We’re thankful for him because he introduced us and that led to us getting married.”

While they’re not married yet, Patrick proposed to Abby on the beach in December 2023 and revealed to GQ last September they’re planning a 2025 wedding.

“As I’ve learned, the role is just to make sure that she’s happy, just whatever she wants to do,” the eldest son of exes Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver told the magazine. “I’m happy to give my opinion on things, and otherwise I’m just there to support her and make it so that she has the best day that she wants. That’s really my job.”

For now, they’re happy with their relationship status as each other’s No. 1 fans.

“So proud of the human you are,” Patrick wrote in an Instagram tribute for Abby’s birthday in February. “You continue to inspire me. I love watching your dedication to your family, friends, faith and your work. It’s been a blessing to be on this journey with you & I can’t wait to watch where life takes us.”

Sam Nivola, Iris Apatow, White Lotus Season 3 PremiereEmma McIntyre/Getty Images

Sam Nivola & Iris Apatow

Wondering how Sam Nivola and Iris Apatow met? No, it wasn’t through, as he once joked to British Vogue, “some secret cabal of nepo kids who hang out in black robes.”

Though we like the idea of his parents—actors Emily Mortimer and Alessandro Nivola—and hers—Leslie Mann and Judd Apatow—playing matchmaker, it was a mutual friend who was responsible for their pairing.

As he recalled to Teen Vogue in February, Sam (who portrays Saxon’s younger brother Lochlan on The White Lotus) and Iris were introduced by their pal Isa Barrett at a London bar. While The Perfect Couple alum said he tried to shoot his shot with The Bubble actress, she was in a relationship at the time and “was not having it.”

But after Iris’ romance ended, Sam decided to see if they could give dating another go. They made their relationship Instagram in the spring of 2024 and have since moved in together.

“I’m so in love, and she’s so amazing,” Sam told Teen Vogue. “I think the thing about moving in with someone is that when you’re this young, it’s always like, ‘Oh my God, you’re going to get sick of them.’ You’re going to spend all day, every day together, and then it’s going to be routine, and you’re going to feel like you’ve been in a marriage for 30 years. I don’t think that would happen with her anyway, just because we’re so in love.”