At the tender age of 25, Brooklyn Beckham has already tried his hand as a photographer, influencer, model and chef.
So when his wife landed her first film-directing gig, those working on the project predicted that it was only a matter of time before he joined her on set.
And, sure enough, the footballer’s son quickly found himself in front of the camera.
As Nicola Peltz Beckham explained, initially the plan was that he would appear incognito in her movie, Lola, in which she also plays the leading role.
‘I directed a film last year that I wrote when I was 23,’ she told the Hollywood Reporter. ‘And Brooklyn is still mad at me. He was like, “Can I be in your movie?” And I was like, “Oh my gosh, I would be honoured, but we have to disguise you.”
‘Obviously he’s covered in tattoos and he’s British. So he did a few parts in the background which, if you pay attention, you can find, but in one scene he’s like, “Can I put the mic on, I wanna say a line?”’
As word spread within the family of his pending speaking role, hopes were raised that Brooklyn might finally have found his calling.
Mum and dad David and Victoria Beckham thought it was ‘so sweet and very romantic’, say friends, and chatter quickly began of a future Hollywood career even his ambitious parents couldn’t have dreamed of.
Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz have been married since April 2022
Nicola has revealed she cut Brooklyn from the finished version of her film, Lola
Ms Peltz plays the leading role in the movie, which has been criticised as ‘poverty porn’
But when the film debuts in Britain later this month, anyone hoping to catch a glimpse of the rising star will be sorely disappointed – for his wife has revealed she cut him from the finished movie.
‘I started laughing so hard,’ reveals Nicola. ‘He had the most British accent ever. I ended up cutting him out! He sat there, in the editing room, he was like, “Did you really just cut me out while I’m sitting here?” I was like, “Yes, I love you so much!”’
Those who know Brooklyn say that while he tried to laugh off the sacking, he was ‘pretty devastated’.
‘Brooklyn loves doing different things,’ said one friend. ‘He is always looking for the next thing, when it comes to Brand Brooklyn he’s clever, he has watched his parents build theirs for his whole life.
‘Being in a film which is now coming to Britain would have been amazing for him and in his mind could have led to more. But the fact is, he just wasn’t very good. Nicola had the chance of a lifetime to make her mark as a film director. She had to let him go, she laughs about it but it was a hard thing for her to do.
‘Brooklyn is like a loved up puppy around her, so to hand him news like that was actually not that easy to do.’
Perhaps rather predictably some sources close to the project are ‘relieved’ that Brooklyn’s fledging film career has ended before it began.
‘It really could have cheapened it,’ says one industry insider.
The couple attend the film’s premiere in Los Angeles
Victoria Beckham and her daughter-in-law had a rocky start to their relationship, but have seemingly made amends
But cutting her husband’s scene is, sadly for Nicola, unlikely to end the ridicule she will face when the film is released here on February 7.
Because already the irony of the story isn’t lost on the top brass of British television, some of whom are ‘howling with laughter’ at the ‘audacity’ that Nicola has chosen to focus on the underbelly of life in middle America.
The movie tells the story of working-class Lola, played by Nicola, who is struggling to free herself and her little brother Arlo from a toxic home life. Their mother is an alcoholic and Lola is juggling a daytime job in a supermarket with nighttime work as a stripper to make enough money for them to escape.
The plot has been widely described as little more than ‘poverty porn’, with some critics even accusing Nicole of ‘exploiting’ hardship.
And perhaps her critics have a point given that Nicola, the very wealthy daughter of American billionaire businessman Nelson Peltz and model Claudia Heffner, hails from a world of luxury and privilege her alter-ego Lola could never even dream of.
Born in Westchester County, New York, she attended Rye Country Day School where annual fees range between £50,000 and £60,000 a year.
Home now is a £22million mansion in Beverly Hills, having grown up splitting her time between her family’s Palm Beach residence and a 27-bedroom mansion in Bedford, New York.
The Peltz’s 130-acre Palm Beach estate once belonged to DeWitt Wallace, the co-founder of Reader’s Digest, and boasts an indoor ice rink, a flock of albino peacocks and a collection of Old Masters.
Nicola’s father is American billionaire businessman Nelson Peltz, pictured far left with Elon Musk and the couple
Nicola’s in-laws attend her film’s premiere at LA’s Regency Bruin Theatre
It was here where she and Brooklyn married in a stunning, no-expense-spared three-day extravaganza in April 2022, which saw 500 guests party in luxury marquees overlooking the ocean.
As a billionaire heiress, Nicola wears designer clothes and counts plenty of A-listers in her inner circle. She’s been best friends with Sofia Richie, Lionel Richie’s youngest daughter, since 2015, and the two are often seen together at fashion shows or meeting for lunch at LA hotspot Mauro’s.
She’s also regularly seen with the likes of Gigi Hadid, who recommended Nicola for a starring role in her then-boyfriend, former One Direction singer Zayn Malik’s 2016 music video for It’s You.
Now 30, she’s managed to carve out an acting career of sorts, dating back to her first role in the 2006 festive movie Deck the Halls.
Since then, she’s starred in films such as The Last Airbender, 2010, which earned her a nomination for the ‘Worst Supporting Actress’ in the Golden Raspberry Awards. She also featured in Transformers: Age of Extinction, 2014, and the A&E drama series Bates Motel, 2013-2017. She later turned to modelling and walked in Alexander Wang’s last fashion show for Balenciaga at Paris Fashion Week in 2015.
Lola, her directorial debut, which she describes as a ‘slice-of-life film’, has been six years in the making and much of the press coverage in the US illustrates just how well-connected she is in the industry.
‘You should be so proud of yourself,’ gushed an interviewer from the Hollywood Reporter. Vogue’s coverage of the film’s premiere, meanwhile, tactfully glossed over the gritty plotlines to focus on what Peltz Beckham wore to the launch (one of her mother-in-law’s designs, naturally).
Outside of these circles, though, the reviews have been pretty scathing.
‘Watching this movie is like watching the dumb popular girl from high school who bullies you,’ wrote one. ‘Inauthentic, empty, pathetic, and purely self-indulgent.’ Another described it as ‘one giant narcissistic ego trip’.
Those watching will see Lola struggle to have a relationship with her mother and this, I’m told, is where Nicola and Lola do share some common ground and may have been what inspired her to write the film.
Friends of 30-year-old Nicola tell me that things are ‘strained’ between her and her mother – who is regarded by those who know her as ‘somewhat cold’.
‘Nicola is close to her dad and her siblings but not so with her mother,’ said one pal. ‘So it is interesting that in her movie it is the mother who she has decided to make into a negative character. That hasn’t been lost on those who know her. The two women do struggle to rub along at times.’
Nicola’s difficult relationship with her mother is what brought her closer to Victoria Beckham after a rocky start. The two women are said to have fallen out in the run up to Nicola’s wedding after fashion designer Victoria was unable to make the wedding dress. She was accused of letting the bride-to-be down close to the big day.
But they made up last year and Nicola is said to now see Posh, 50, as a stand-in for her own mum at times.
‘Victoria is loving and warm, Nicola loves that about the Beckham family,’ says one source. ‘She hasn’t always had that.’
Indeed, her in-laws have got behind her and were at her side at the Lola premiere. She and Victoria posed on the pink carpet at the Regency Bruin Theatre in Los Angeles. David was there, as was their son Cruz. The plush Rodeo Room at the Beverly Hills Hotel was hired for the afterparty where pink cocktails were served and a DJ played until the early hours.
David even posted online images of himself wearing movie merchandise to his 74million followers.
It is, of course, publicity that cannot be bought. But I’m told that even some in the upper echelons of Paramount are unsure whether Brand Beckham will be enough to convince Nicola’s British audience that she’s a success.
‘It all feels a bit tacky,’ said one. ‘The execs are worried that she won’t appeal to a more cynical British audience.’
As for Brooklyn, his hopes of an acting debut now lay abandoned on the cutting-room floor.
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