Gossip Of The Week: What’s It Really Like Dating A Celebrity?

UPDATE 7:27 PM PT: Since this column was posted, we have heard from another source, close to George Clooney, who adamantly denies claims that Clooney is dating Monica Jakisic.

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[Original story below…]

Is George Clooney really single? And what does dating a celebrity like George involve anyway?

This week, our celebrity gossip roundup takes a closer look at how the “Gravity” actor is handling the rumors surrounding his love life and, in honor of Halloween, we’re revealing some tales from the crypt of Hollywood exes to figure out what’s really going on with a movie star of George’s caliber.

On Wednesday, the 52-year old actor did something he rarely does: he commented on his romantic status. Together with his publicist Stan Rosenfeld, George told People that he was tired of being linked to three women, namely actress Katie Holmes, barrister Amal Alamuddin and model Monika Jakisic.

When asked about why George was doing this, his rep told the magazine it was “in the interest of stopping the harassment of all three of these women.”

“In other words, George is still a single guy,” the People article concluded.

Hmm. Time to make some calls.

After reaching out to George’s publicist, my research led me to another source — a woman close to George and Monika’s situation. She claimed that the real reason George felt compelled to step forward was because Katie was involved. Katie – aka Tom Cruise’s ex who was also recently linked to Tom’s good friend Jamie Foxx — is a dear friend of George’s and he truly didn’t want to see her caught up in the hearsay. The source also confirmed to Access Hollywood that George is not dating Amal, but he is doing business with her on a reported spy satellite program near Sudan.

As for Monika, the source claims she is the one George is really seeing romantically.

The problem – according to the source—is that there are some hurt feelings on Monika’s side, especially since George supposedly never disclosed to her that he’d be commenting on their relationship to the press.

“Because he’s not acknowledging her, she feels like she’s being portrayed like a hook up buddy and she’s very upset over this,” the source told me exclusively.

Whether or not any of the information I was being given is true, I could see arguments being made on both sides. Sometimes entertainers don’t acknowledge their girlfriends to the media because they want to look available to their fans. Sometimes they think it gives them more privacy. Meanwhile, the love interest is left hanging in the balance.

That was the kind of the case for Pam Behan, the former Kardashian babysitter, who claims she dated Sylvester Stallone in the late ‘80s and wrote about it in her new book, “Malibu Nanny.” By the way, Pam was the only woman I found for this article who would go on record with me.

Now a single mom living in the Midwest, Pam recently told me that in order to keep their courtship quiet, one of the things she and Sylvester did was minimize their outings to the action star’s Malibu mansion.

“I’d never go out in public with him, though my situation was a little different,” Pam said of the six-month affair she claims she had with Sylvester when she was 20 years old. “Nobody knew.”

In a unique twist, Pam explained that they covered up their dalliance at her request, not his. Pam didn’t want Linda Thompson, her employer at the time, to know that she was seeing him. There was a conflict of interest because Linda had previously dated the “Rambo” stud and Pam didn’t want to risk losing her job if Linda found out. (Pam worked for Linda after her divorce from Bruce Jenner. Pam eventually switched jobs and began working for Bruce when he married his third wife, Kris Jenner.)

WATCH: Former Kardashian Nanny Pam Behan Tells All!

Not addressing her romance with Sylvester specifically, Pam says she does feel that it is common for celebrities to deny their relationships with “other” women and that it is an accepted practice in the biz.

“Just because of the newness, you don’t know if it’s going to last or not. It’s not a bad thing. You don’t know where it’s going, they don’t know where it’s going… They’re just protecting their image,” she said.

Twenty years later, life is very different for Pam and she no longer feels obligated to keep the matter under wraps.

“I think so much time has passed, I’m not going to rock the boat. It’s now like Pam’s cute story about how I came from a town of 123 people, had a crush on a movie star, got to meet him, date him and you know, the rest of the story,” she added.

To tell you the truth, Pam’s story is not unique. As somebody who has worked behind the scenes in Hollywood for close to a decade, I’ve heard very similar experiences from women about how they were sworn to secrecy by their famous beaus. In the interest of this piece, I tried to get convince a dozen friends and acquaintances to share their personal experiences with me. But everybody was either too scared of the ramifications or felt extremely protective over the person they were dating… or had dated.

One woman even told me that her ex (another leading man) was so paranoid about people finding out about their liaison, he secretly instructed a photographer at a birthday party not to give her any of the pictures that they took together.

“I called the photographer and he said there was a fire in his studio,” my pal said. “He was too smart.”

It’s an extreme case, but it really begs the question of how much is too much. Sometimes, you just have to trust the parties involved. Otherwise, it just gets too personal.

— Genevieve Wong