Bill Nighy denies Anna Wintour romance after Met Gala — but friends say they are a couple

Anna Wintour and Bill Nighy had their fashion coronation at the Met Gala Monday night – but there’s confusion over whether it’s Love, Actually.

After years of denials that their relationship was anything but a longstanding friendship, the Vogue doyenne made her red carpet debut with the Oscar-nominated actor in front of a global audience.

The couple arrived arm in arm at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Wintour, clad in Chanel to honor her friend Karl Lagerfeld, whispered in Nighy’s ear as they posed for the cameras and climbed the steep stairs to the glittering event.

Intriguingly, however, a rep for Nighy chose to deny the romance, telling Page Six Tuesday: “Bill and Anna have simply been great friends for two decades. They are not in a relationship.”

Although reps for Wintour declined to comment about the relationship, a source close to the Condé Nast chief told Page Six: “We think last night speaks for itself.”

And a guest inside the lavish bash, attended by stars from Kim Kardashian to Rihanna, said the pair spent the event together, adding: “They are so cute.”

Another insider pointed out that Wintour was smiling the entire time, saying: “They are the new royal couple of fashion! Look at their body language — I have never seen Anna like that before….even when she was with Shelby (Bryan, her former partner), he would always stand behind her.”

Wintour and Nighy, both 73 and both Brits, have been friends for decades and have been often spotted together on trips to the theater and restaurants around London and NYC.

While in Rome together in 2021, Nighy was seen presenting the famously-bobbed Wintour with roses.

And over the space of a few weeks in 2018, they were seen at the theater in London – once to see ‘The Jungle’ and then also in the audience at “The Inheritance.”

In February 2020, Page Six told how they were spotted enjoying a cosy dinner at Sant Ambroeus on Madison Avenue and according to one onlooker, the editor looked “happier than I have ever seen her.”

The source told us at the time: “Anna was beaming the whole time. She looked happy and in very good company. She was beautifully made-up and she was smiling so much — she had her sunglᴀsses off the entire time!

They were sitting together in a corner enjoying a frothy coffee.” A week later, the actor joined Wintour as she hosted a screening of his film, an adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Emma.”

Back in December, Wintour posed with Nighy as she hosted a screening of another of his movies, “Living”, at the Crosby H๏τel. Although he was nominated for a best actor Oscar, Wintour did not join him at the Hollywood ceremony in March.

Nighy split from his long-term partner, actor Diana Quick, with whom he has a daughter, actress Mary Nighy, in 2008, while Wintour had a long-running relationship with Texan businessman Shelby Bryan, that ended a few years ago.

She has two grown children, Bee Carrozzini and Charles Shaffer with her former husband, David Shaffer.

Both Wintour and Nighy have remained coy when quizzed about their relationship.

When asked about Wintour, Nighy told The Telegraph in February: “I’d love to answer that…but if I did, I’d be involving the Telegraph’s readers in something very close to gossip, and I know they’d never forgive me for that.”

While Wintour herself declined to comment on Nighy in an interview with The Telegraph this weekend. Although she admitted that English men made more entertaining dinner companions than Americans, when asked if she wanted to clarify her relationship with the “Pirates of the Caribbean” star, she ended the interview by saying “I think that’s “time”.”