She’s one of Hollywood’s top actresses who unfortunately hasn’t always been lucky when it comes to relationships.
But Olivia Munn revealed on Tuesday some very important dating advice she once received from ‘big brother’ Jamie Foxx after he caught her visibly upset over a guy.
The 38-year-old beauty opened up about how he changed her perception of her self worth whilst on good friend Busy Philipps new talk show, Busy Tonight.
HE’s got her back! Olivia Munn revealed on Tuesday that Jamie Foxx once left her a voicemail with sage dating advice after he saw her upset at an event due to a guy
Telling stories: The 38-year-old beauty opened up about how he changed her perception of her self worth whilst on good friend Busy Philipps new talk show, Busy Tonight
Olivia explained she was at an event with a guy who she had been dating for a few months, but although she hoped they were officially in a relationship, he didn’t appear as keen.
And after she saw her beau talking with other women, she quickly found herself saddened and wanting to leave the party even though Jamie had encouraged her to stay.
However, the following day, she was blessed by a voicemail from the actor.
Spilling the tea: ‘He left a voicemail and he said, “Did you come out here to be somebody’s girlfriend? No. Did you come out her to be somebody’s wife? No. Did you come out her to just date this guy? No. Did you come out here to be an actress? Yes.”,’ she began
‘He left a voicemail and he said, “Did you come out here to be somebody’s girlfriend? No. Did you come out her to be somebody’s wife? No. Did you come out her to just date this guy? No. Did you come out here to be an actress? Yes.”,’ she began.
Jamie continued: ‘”Don’t you ever ever let me see you cry about some guy ever again. Don’t you ever let some other guy make you feel like that ever again”.’
And Olivia confessed that to this day, she still thinks about those words.
Sweet Jamie: ‘It was so sweet and he was just so earnest. He was just like, “I never want to see you let any man make you feel that small again”,’ she shared
‘It was so sweet and he was just so earnest. He was just like, “I never want to see you let any man make you feel that small again”,’ she shared.
‘Every now and then it would pop into my head and of course sometimes I’ve kinda veered off, but when I think of that it brings me back to center.’
While the Oceans 8 star didn’t name the man in question, she did reveal he was a well known Hollywood actor.
Olivia’s last noted relationship was with Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rogers from 2014 to 2017.
As of 2018, the NFL star is dating former race-car driver Danica Patrick.
Busy Tonight airs Mondays through Thursdays at 10pm on E!
Former love: Olivia’s last noted relationship was with Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rogers from 2014 to 2017
Charly Lester is the Co-Founder and CMO of Lumen, the first app-only dating platform for over 50s. Fresh from raising £3.5m from Andrey Andreev, the Founder of Badoo, Charly shares her story and motivation to make 50 the new 30.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
On Lumen … Lumen is the first ever dating app for over 50s. While dating sites for over 50s do exist, no site has ever launched solely as an app – because dating sites for over 50s have always been more targeted at those in their 70s than those in their 50s and 60s. Lumen was my co-founder’s (Antoine Argouges) idea – but the minute he told me about it I knew it needed to be done, because for the last 5 years people had been asking me which app their divorced parents should try, and I had never had an answer for them. The over 50s have been a forgotten generation in tech, and yet they are the fastest growing demographic for tech use.
On motivation … Firstly because none of the mainstream dating apps were designed for over 50s. Until recently you couldn’t even create a Tinder account if you were over 50, and now if you’re over 55 it doesn’t even show your age on the filter, it’s just ‘55+’. Secondly, women in their 50s and 60s have long complained about issues where men their age ignore them on dating apps, and only look for younger women. By making Lumen as space for over 50s only, the women on the app know that any men registered on Lumen are interested in dating women their age.
Over 50s are too often the target of scammers and catfish online, so Lumen is the first mainstream dating app to insist on 100% photo-verification. Every user takes a selfie of him or herself on registration, and this is cross-referenced with the photos on their dating profile. The artificial intelligence also moderates for age. We also have features which encourage better quality profiles (every user must have at least 3 photos) and better conversation (your ice-breaker has to be at least 50 characters long, so you can’t just say ‘hi’).
On investment … My co-founder Antoine was formerly Head of Revenue for Badoo, so he had worked directly for Andrey Andreev, CEO of Badoo and Active Partner and Investor in Bumble and Chappy. It made sense to approach Andrey for investment first because he has over 15 years of experience and success in the dating industry, and he was able to provide a tech infrastructure for us, as well as financial investment. We did look at alternative venture capital options, but for us, Andrey’s reputation and experience were deal-breakers.
Left to Right: Andrey Andreev (Founder Badoo), Antoine Argouges (Co-Founder Lumen), Charly Lester (Co-Founder Lumen)Image provided by Charly Lester
On the journey … My career in dating began when I wrote a dating blog called ’30 Dates’. The blog itself started with a Facebook joke. I was single, 29 and working in banking. I suggested on Facebook that I would go on 30 blind dates before my 30th birthday if my friends sent me on them. My friends encouraged me to write a blog, and 2000 people read the first post on the first day. 30 Dates was quickly picked up by The Guardian, and I went to work for them as a dating editor. I then went to Time Out as Global Head of Dating and set up industry awards for the online and offline dating industries, based on questions I kept being asked on the blog.
I ran the UK, US, and European Dating Awards, and corresponding industry conferences for 4 years traveling all over the world and assessing different dating apps, websites, experts and matchmakers. I became known as one of the leading dating industry experts in the world, and appeared on TVs shows like BBC Watchdog, Newsnight and the final of The Apprentice, advising Lord Sugar when a finalist designed a dating app.
On lessons learned … There is no such thing as personal limitations. I’m not a runner. I don’t have a runner’s build, and never ran at school, and yet I am a triathlete, and recently completed my first Ironman triathlon (in a pretty competitive 13 hours 50). I just set my mind to it and trained for it. The same applies to all areas of life. I am an orphan, whose mother was a ‘Romanian immigrant’ and yet I studied Law at Cambridge, and have gone on to be one of the most successful graduates in my year group. You set your own goals and your own limitations. And something I have definitely found was that the more I achieve, the higher I push those next goal posts.
Charly Lester (Co-Founder Lumen)Image provided by Charly Lester
Best advice … To own my niche. When I left my role at Time Out, I was looking for more general roles in tech, and the Head of Innovation, Ellie Ford, encouraged me to stick to my guns and make the most of all the knowledge I had acquired about the dating industry. A few months later I appeared on the Apprentice and Newsnight, and the next year I launched the Dating Awards internationally.
On success factors …
Tenacity – I won’t give up on something. Being an entrepreneur is never just plain sailing, and there may be days, weeks or months, where things just don’t go to plan. You have to be able to stick it out and keep driving forward, even when your steps forward feel tiny.
Self-belief – I give a lot of dating advice, and I always tell people that you need to love yourself before others can love you. Well, the same applies to self-belief. You can’t expect others to believe in you, and your ideas, if you don’t believe in them yourself.
Agility – No matter how much I love an idea, I’ve learned to be agile with my business decisions and to recognize when I need to pivot. I think one of the biggest lessons an entrepreneur can learn, is when to put away the ego. Sometimes you need to admit your idea was wrong, shrug it off, and work out what the right answer is.
An interest in people – this is vital for dating. I love people and I love hearing their stories. I can remember, when I interviewed for Law at Cambridge, doubting myself because the law professor was looking for someone interested in the macrocosm, and I was definitely always about the microcosm. I have set interests, and I am super interested in those things. People and relationships have always been something which fascinates me.
On brand … Lumen is a measure of light – and the reason behind this is because we are an app with no grey areas or dark corners. Honesty and clarity are fundamental to our brand. We also like the idea of shining a light on over 50s and letting them have their own time to shine. Many of them will have just come out of long relationships, or many years raising kids, and now is the time to shine the spotlight on them.
In terms of marketing, we have two avenues. Marketing to over 50s with collaborations with brands which they resonate with – National Trust Magazine, Royal Albert Hall, Marie Claire magazine, Woman & Home magazine, British Airways, Waitrose, and then marketing to their kids, because we know that adult children are the biggest influencer when it comes to over 50s choosing dating apps and sites. Our recent Tube ads had a cheeky campaign to ‘Get your Mum off Tinder!’ which went down really well with both under 50s and their parents.
On inspiration …
Whitney Wolfe Herd. What she has done for female empowerment with Bumble is immense.
Alix Fox (BBC Radio 1 journalist). She is a great friend who is changing the way a nation talks about sex and dating.
Susie Chan. An ultra-marathoner. I completed my first Ironman triathlon this summer and am signed up to Marathon des Sables next year.
On what success looks like … We don’t want to just be the biggest app or site for over 50s, we want to be one of the biggest and most well-known dating apps in the world. We are already the fifth most popular dating app in the UK, in terms of daily downloads, behind Bumble, Tinder, Plenty of Fish and Badoo. If we can be in that top 5, worldwide, we will be ecstatic. ‘Tinder’ has too long become the colloquial noun for a dating app, let’s make Lumen a household name.
Reception since launch … Phenomenal! We already have over 1000 downloads every day in the UK, and we will be launching internationally very soon. We’ve already had success stories, which is amazing after just 8 weeks. This is a product which people have been waiting for for a long time.
In the 1980s, 18-year-old Donna Barnes moved from Philadelphia to New York City with dreams of hitting it big. She lived in Manhattan and found work as a catalog model. She became well-known among local model/actresses, and she navigated the social and dating scene with easy confidence.
Then, at age 30, Donna had her heart broken. She had never felt such profound sadness over a rejection before then, and she said that experience gave her a lot of compassion for singles recovering from breakups and going through heartaches.
Donna Barnes gained authority in the dating scene after 30 years of living as a single woman in New York City.
“I understood dating differently after that. It set me on my journey,” she told us. “I started reading everything I could get my hands on because it was the only thing that made me feel better — I had to figure out what had happened.”
Ultimately, Donna decided to just be single for a while and focus on her career.
In the early 2000s, a friend introduced her to a producer who was making a documentary about several single and successful women in New York City. She agreed to be part of the project, which aired on Sky UK as “The Real Sex in the City,” and then Metro TV picked up the eight-part series and called it “To Live and Date in New York.” We TV later aired it as “Single in the City.”
The success of this series opened doors for Donna. She landed a gig as a co-host on a local talk show focused on relationship topics, and she spent 205 episodes giving her opinions and advice. A promotional poster for the show branded her as a “dating expert” for the first time, and Donna embraced the title. She enrolled in classes at NYU to become a certified life coach and began working on a book.
In 2007, Donna took on her first coaching clients, and she has been helping people navigate the dating scene ever since.
“It was a serendipitous journey to becoming a relationship coach,” she said reflectively. “What makes me unique is that I don’t just have book knowledge. I have almost 30 years of being single in New York having my own experience and hearing my friends’ experiences.”
Growing Her Social Media Presence on YouTube & Beyond
Donna told us her acting experience has helped her excel at creating conversational and attention-grabbing videos geared toward singles and couples. She began her YouTube channel in 2011 with modest aspirations but found many people leaving comments asking for more content and wondering why she didn’t have a bigger following. Donna saw an opportunity to grow her audience and her client base, and she threw herself into it. Her channel now has over 376,000 views.
Each video on Donna’s channel covers a particular dating topic — ranging from dating rules to conflict resolution — and offers succinct solutions based on 30 years of dating and 11 years of dating coaching experience.
Donna isn’t yet an expert on social media marketing and online channel optimization, but she’s getting there. She is currently educating herself on how the medium can work to her advantage as a life and relationship coach. Some of her most popular videos have over 1,000 views, and her channel currently has 3,600 subscribers — and it’s still growing.
“It’s still a work in progress, but it’s getting bigger,” Donna said. “Right now I’m investigating doing group chats on my YouTube channel because I think it’d be really helpful to get people talking about dating and giving each other guidance.”
Donna currently facilitates an active dialogue in the comments section of her videos and in her advice blog, but she has her sights set on fostering a real-time conversation among her online audience in the future. Through her YouTube channel, she plans to set up weekly group chats where singles can commiserate with one another and inspire one another.
Over the last few years, Donna has made an impact on the dating scene one conversation at a time. Her work with coaching clients has helped her choose topics that are relevant to the modern dater. In videos lasting no longer than five minutes. Donna sums up the dating and relationship lesson gleaned from her personal experiences and professional knowledge.
“The more you coach, the better you get, and the more knowledge you get,” she said. “A lot of people just want to know that they’re normal. I hear that all the time. They just want to know they’re not the only ones going through this.”
Her Pragmatic Voice Cuts Through the Noise
As a life coach, relationship coach, and breakup coach, Donna sees people of all ages and backgrounds. She said her youngest client was a 15-year-old girl whose single father reached out to Donna because he didn’t know how to talk to his daughter about dating and sex.
On the other end of the spectrum, Donna’s oldest client was a 70-year-old woman whose husband had passed away years ago. The widow wanted to meet a new partner but didn’t know how. Donna recommended going to a bar to have dinner because a lot of older single men don’t want to cook for themselves so they’ll have a quiet meal at the bar of a nice restaurant. The first time the woman tried this, she ended up meeting a man.
Some of Donna’s clients have been single for a while and want to get out of their rut, while other clients are recently divorced and don’t know how to adapt to a dating scene now littered with sites and apps. Donna also specializes in breakup recovery and helping clients heal and move forward with their lives after a relationship is over. She’s not afraid to tell her clients the truth, and that’s something that many singles need to break through the echo chamber of quick tips on the web.
“Quite frankly, the truth is there’s no guaranteed way to get your ex back,” Donna said. “People do what they want to do. If your ex wants to come back, that’s the only way they’ll come back.”
Donna’s YouTube channel and blog get to the heart of a variety of dating and relationship topics.
In Donna’s private coaching practice, she helps her clients get out of their own way so they can get in a relationship. She told us the story about one single man who was adamant that he couldn’t date a woman who was religious. He was culturally Jewish but didn’t follow organized religion, and he wanted a partner to be on the same page on this issue.
Donna encouraged him to make an exception and give all women a chance. “Long story short, he ended up marrying a Catholic,” she said. “He’s crazy about her. They seem happy. I haven’t heard from him in awhile, and, if I don’t hear from my clients, it’s usually because they’re happy.”
Another man told Donna his biggest dating obstacle was his height. According to him, women weren’t attracted to him because he was only 5’4. The dating coach shook her head and spent several sessions telling him it was all in his head, and women were repelled by his negative attitude, not his height.
Donna empowers her clients to confidently pursue the love life they want.
The message sunk in when he told her about a date that he’d thought hadn’t gone well, but Donna begged to differ. She saw signs that the woman was interested in him. Donna pushed him to give her a call despite his pessimism, and the woman ended up sleeping with him on their next date. After that, the single man behaved more confidently with women and found his dating prospects dramatically improved.
“He didn’t think she liked him, but that was his own insecurities talking,” Donna said. “That’s one of my favorite stories because you are what you think you are. You have to stop making decisions for other people. Don’t decide what someone else thinks about you. Just be who you are and be confident.”
Encouraging Singles to Adjust Their Relationship Habits
Donna worked on her first self-help book for years before feeling satisfied that she’d hit the right tone and said what she felt needed to be said. She published “Giving Up Junk-Food Relationships: Recipes for Healthy Choices” in 2012. The book offers a lighthearted take on maintaining a healthy relationship. Throughout the book, she cleverly compares positive dating habits to going on a diet. In this case, you’re not cutting out breads and cheese, though; you’re cutting out bad influences and cheesy daters.
“Giving Up Junk-Food Relationships” trains readers to cultivate healthier dating habits.
“It’s incredibly well-written,” said Dany M Bouchedid in an Amazon review. “The food metaphors are an absolutely brilliant way of explaining very complex psychological concepts. This book should be required reading before anyone enters into a relationship.”
Another reader said the book’s insights motivated him to turn his love life around. “Ingenious that the author applies humor with intellect allowing us to laugh at ourselves,” Keno said. “At the same time, it drives the point home that you need to learn and apply. A must read!”
Donna wrote “Giving Up Junk-Food Relationships” under the umbrella title of “Relationship Recipes,” which left the door open to turning the book into a series. The dating coach said she intends to write more self-help books to guide singles in need of a wake-up call in the dating scene. “It’s on the to-do list,” she said. “I’d very much like to write at least one follow-up book.”
Life Coach Donna Barnes Shares 30 Years of Knowledge
When Donna first started dating, she assumed it would be easy to find love and get married. As she grew up and gained experience in the dating scene, however, she realized that a lasting relationship doesn’t “just happen” — she had to make it happen. Donna committed herself to mastering the art of relationship-building, and she now has a flourishing coaching career and a dedicated boyfriend to show for it.
Today, Donna offers straightforward insights to singles and couples facing challenges in their personal lives. Her compassionate and conversational coaching style has inspired many clients, viewers, and readers to reassess their dating habits and recognize the mistakes they’ve made in the past.
“Whether it’s through coaching or YouTube, my primary focus is always helping my clients grow and become the best version of themselves,” she said. “It’s really rewarding to look back and feel like all of my mistakes were worth it because I’ve prevented a lot of people from making the same mistakes.”
Now comes the hard part: You have to decide whether the benefits outweigh the risks. If you’re seriously worried that flirting with an old boss could harm your career, then don’t chance it — there are plenty of other amazing people to have amazing sex with, date, or marry. But if you don’t think asking for the date will make any difference to your current or future jobs, then why not? If that’s the case, asking out your ex-boss becomes just like asking out any friend or acquaintance. Sure, it’s still hard, because facing rejection always is, but it’s 100% doable.