Latest news with #DustinLanceBlack
Telegraph
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Tom Daley: ‘People don't see how much love we have in our family as same-sex parents'
was just nine years old when he first dived for Great Britain, having started at his local dive club in Plymouth two years earlier. At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Daley was Team GB's youngest team member, aged just 14. He has also competed at the London 2012, Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020, and Paris 2024 games, winning three bronze medals, one silver and one gold. He is a four-time World Champion, a two-time junior World Champion, a five-time European Champion and a four-time Commonwealth Champion. In 2013, Daley announced his relationship with American film screenwriter, director and producer Dustin Lance Black. The couple married in 2017 and now live in LA with their two sons. In August 2024, Daley retired from professional diving and launched his knitting brand, Made With Love. Best thing about representing your country? Growing up, reaching the Olympic Games and representing Team GB had been a childhood dream of mine – to wear the kit, to go to the opening ceremonies. But the best part is having all of the hard work you've done with your team pay off in one moment. Being able to have everybody there to support you. It's a surreal moment when you finally get to do it. Best moment of your career? One is obviously winning the Olympic Gold medal at the Tokyo 2020 Games. That will always be the best thing I'll ever have achieved as a diver. But Tokyo was weird [because of the pandemic]. No one was there. You had your teammates, but gradually as the events went on it would empty out because you had to leave as soon as you'd finished, so it was very surreal by the end. Getting to compete in Paris, in front of my family, was probably one of the things I'll cherish most. It felt like a bonus year for me because I honestly thought I'd retire after Tokyo. I took two years off then came back into the sport. My son inspired me, to be honest. I could say: 'This is fun, I can just enjoy it for what it is' – which was quite a liberating experience. Best personality trait? I am very hard-working and I like to follow through when it comes to my goals. I'm also good at supporting people around me; I understand how much it means for people to reach a goal. Currently it's all about knitting – that has really become my outlet post-diving, so I've been working on lots of patterns and instructions to help people make things. My office is currently a disaster with all kinds of craziness and yarn and things that I've been creating. My older son, Robbie, builds loads of Lego, so while I'm in here knitting, he sits and builds Lego; it's our little creative space. Best thing about becoming a dad? Being able to see everything again for the first time; you appreciate the little things that you'd usually take for granted. When Robbie was very small and we'd go for walks, we'd look up at the trees and he was amazed by them, and you realise that these things you see every day really are amazing, so you gain a new appreciation for them. Plus, it's incredibly special to always be the person they're most excited to see, when your kids come up to you and just want to sit with you, be with you, that's so wonderful. Best thing about coming out? I don't think I would have ever found true happiness if I hadn't come out. It felt like I was constantly putting up a mask of how I wanted other people to perceive me, giving people what I thought they wanted, and it was exhausting. So it was liberating to come out and not have to worry about slipping up, hiding who I was or feeling like I was ashamed. Coming out allowed me to be free and without fear of judgement from anyone. Best thing about knitting? It's my way of being able to switch off from everything. My coach told me I needed to learn to rest and recover, and my husband suggested I should try knitting or crochet because that's what he'd seen people doing on film sets while they were waiting. I fired up YouTube to learn, gave it a go and became obsessed. I look forward to the time I have to knit – it's just so calming. The two best knits I've done are my Olympic jumpers, which I have hanging in my office. I made one in Tokyo which started it all off, then I made another in Paris – to have these things for the rest of my life from the Olympics, which I made… I think that's pretty cool. Best celebrity encounter you've ever had? The person who I think is genuinely the nicest, smartest, kindest, most selfless, most generous and all-round lovely human being is Emma Watson. She's everything you imagine or hope she'd be. We'd spoken online but only met a few years ago at some event and we hit it off. Obviously – on a much greater level than me – she became very famous very young, so we spoke about what that was like for each of us. I will always feel very privileged to know Emma. However, the one I was most starstruck by was Gemma Collins, who I taught to dive on ITV's Splash! She's hilarious. Whenever she's in a room with anyone, she just commands the space, it's quite incredible really. Worst thing about diving? Getting wet. I know that comes with the territory but in the mornings, especially in the winter and especially when I was training in outdoor pools in LA, it gets quite cold. It'd be maybe eight degrees and I'd have to get in the pool and do all of my dives outside. The moment when you first get in that cold pool and get wet, that was always the worst bit. Plus the chlorine. I always say I'm wearing my signature cologne: eau de chlorine. Worst personality trait? I'm a stickler for a schedule; I like to know what I'm doing, where I'm going. I think it's the athlete in me who likes a plan and likes to be able to do things on time, whereas my husband is very much on the more creative side. He's like: 'Let's just go with the flow, let's see what time we get there.' It drives me mad. I'm one of those people who gets mad at my husband when we're running late for the imaginary schedule I have in my head, which I haven't told him about. Worst thing that has ever been written about you? People always have their opinions. I don't think there's ever anything that's been too crazy bad. The things I take to heart most are if anybody writes anything about us as parents – I struggle with that. Some people don't necessarily see how much love we have in our family as same-sex parents and how we really want to do the best we can to be the best parents we can. So when anybody writes anything negative about me or my husband as parents, that hits pretty hard. But also I know the way that it goes with social media – it is what it is. It's just an opinion someone has, so whatever. Worst thing about competing for Team GB? A lot of pressure to perform. That's kind of what makes it fun, too, but when I was younger I used to find it difficult to deal with. There's a lot of guilt if you don't achieve what you'd hoped to achieve – you feel like you've really let people down. I suppose there's always perspective; there's always something going on in your life which feels more stressful that puts other things into perspective. I was doing my A-Levels in 2012 while training for the Olympics. Whenever I was doing schoolwork that felt more stressful than diving, and whenever I was diving that felt more stressful than A-Levels. Since becoming a parent, I've been able to realise that my family will love me regardless of how I perform, so the pressure stops mattering so much. Worst thing about becoming a household name so young? Whenever I was out of the house I was always 'on'. I never knew who might be watching. Not that I wanted to do anything too crazy, but you're always hyper-vigilant about everything rather than just being able to be present and in the moment with your friends. I struggled with that a lot. I'm grateful for all the cool things I was able to do as a result, but there's always that feeling that there was somebody watching what I was doing at all times. That was tough. Worst childhood memory? In terms of my young childhood, I used to get really homesick when I was away competing. One time I was in Australia; I was 10 years old, on the other side of the planet, jet-lagged, not able to sleep, and I remember feeling incredibly homesick. I used to love being at the competition, but as soon as it was night-time there'd be so much time to overthink, I'd downward spiral. My parents would always reassure me that I didn't have to go if I didn't want to but I did want to, so eventually I grew out of it. Worst thing about wearing Speedos so much? You're very exposed. Growing up I never really thought about it, because it was just the uniform – and they do work: nothing falls out of place when you're hitting the water at 35mph. But, when I got a bit older, I was told by my performance directors that I had to get in better shape and suddenly I felt quite exposed. Still, it's part and parcel of diving. There aren't many people who wear more clothes to bed than they do to work, so that was fun. Worst annoyance? You know what drives me mad? When you go to wash the dishes in the sink, and someone leaves a bunch of bits of food in the plughole which you have to fish out. Usually I'll cook and Lance does the dishes, and his idea of doing the dishes is taking them from the table and putting them in the sink. Personally, I'd think about putting them in the dishwasher. I try to be very mindful about the amount of dishes I use, whereas when he cooks he uses every single cooking utensil in the world and leaves it for me to clean up. Whether you're gay or straight, there's always someone in every relationship who has to deal with that, I think.
Yahoo
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Tom Daley Gets Candid On Fame, Fatherhood And His Closeted Past In New Documentary
As a young diver, Tom Daley never imagined he'd one day feel confident enough to share specifics of his personal life with fans. That changed in 2013, when the British Olympic diver came out as gay in a YouTube video. Twelve years later, Daley gets even more candid in a new documentary, 'Tom Daley: 1.6 Seconds.' Released this month on Discovery+ and in the U.S. and on HBO Max elsewhere, the film finds the now-retired athlete reflecting on his rise to fame, his path toward living as his true self and his relationships with his husband of eight years, screenwriter and filmmaker Dustin Lance Black, and his late father, Robert Daley. 'It's weird when somebody comes to you and says, 'We want to make a documentary about your life.' I was a little bit hesitant to start with, because ... what do I even have to say? What do I want to say?' Daley told HuffPost in an interview. 'But the more I got into what was going on beneath the surface when I was growing up ... the fact that my kids are going to be able to understand a bit more about what their papa did ... it felt like therapy.' Admirers of Daley's aquatic prowess won't be disappointed by '1.6 Seconds,' the title of which alludes to his gold medal win in the men's synchronized 10-meter platform at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, held in 2021. While working on the film, director Vaughan Sivell pored through hours of archival footage showing Daley training for childhood competitions and, later, his four Olympic Games. In fact, Daley himself hadn't watched many of the videos before he sat down to provide his on-camera commentary. He can be seen tearing up after some particularly emotional clips, some of which include his father, who died of cancer in 2011 at age 40. 'If I could be half the dad my dad was to me, I feel like my life would be complete,' Daley said. 'My middle name is Robert, named after my dad. My oldest son is also a Robert ― we call him Robbie. The relationship I had with my dad is how I model being a father now.' Other emotional moments in the film include the lead-up to Daley's coming out as well as the early days of his relationship with Black, whom he refers to simply as 'Lance.' In addition to 6-year-old Robbie, Black and Daley share a 1-year-old son, Phoenix. 'When I came out, I had no idea what was going to happen on the other side of it,' Daley said. 'I was told I was going to lose sponsorships and not be able to compete in certain countries. There was a lot of fear around it [and] I didn't think I'd be able to open myself up to falling in love beyond a surface level. But when I met Lance, it felt like I'd met my forever teammate.' Black recently completed work on a documentary of his own, 'Rock Out,' which examines the LGBTQ+ community's unheralded influence on heavy metal, punk and rock music. Daley, meanwhile, has shifted his professional focus. As seen in '1.6 Seconds,' he famously took up knitting and crocheting in 2020, and has since launched the Made With Love brand dedicated to his handiwork. He continues to tout knitting as his 'superpower' and a 'mental reset,' and will further showcase his skills as the host of 'The Game of Wool,' a forthcoming television series. Sports and knitting both factor into Daley's newfound role as a mental health advocate. At the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, he was granted a re-dive after getting distracted by a large number of camera flashes from the crowd ― a chilling moment captured in '1.6 Seconds' that impacted his own mental health. 'We spend all of our life training our bodies to be able to do the thing,' he said. 'But if you don't train your brain as well, how do you know if you're going to be able to hold it together in competition? On a micro or macro level, at some point, everybody deals with a really stressful situation, and how you navigate that and perform under stress and under pressure really will play into how successful that moment might be. So I think for me, I wish I'd started those mindfulness practices slightly earlier in my career.' These days, his routine also includes 'going on walks with my husband. We drop our kids off at school, and then we go for a hike, and we just spend the first hour of our morning just talking to each other. And I know that might not necessarily be 100% mindfulness, but it's our way of talking to each other about anything and everything.' This Glam-Pop Singer Has Been Called 'Gen Z's Elton John.' His New Album Lives Up To That Title. Lily Gladstone Embraces Her Evolving Sexuality Amid New Film's Success Lance Bass Feels 'Danger' For Queer Community As Marriage Anniversary Approaches
Yahoo
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Writer of LGBTQ icon Harvey Milk's biopic calls on Americans to ‘lock arms' amid Trump's attacks
Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to strike the name of gay rights activist Harvey Milk from one of its ships. Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who wrote the film "Milk," joins The Weekend to discuss.
Yahoo
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How Olympic Diver Tom Daley's Husband Dustin Lance Black Helped Him Recover from His Father's Death (Exclusive)
NEED TO KNOW The new Tom Daley documentary 1.6 Seconds premiered globally on Max and on in the U.S. on June 1, 2025 The film explores the life of the Olympian diver, one of Britain's most-celebrated athletes, in and out of the pool 1.6 Seconds highlights Daley's close relationship with his late father, Robert Daley, and how he learned to navigate life without his biggest supporter Tom Daley, 31, faced unimaginable loss when his father and biggest supporter, Robert Daley, passed away at age 40 after the Olympic diver had just turned 17 years old. In the wake of that grief, diving — once a passion they shared — became a lonely and isolating experience. For years, the five-time Olympian felt he had to put on a 'brave face' and look like everything was okay, when internally he felt the opposite. Advertisement However, meeting his soon-to-be husband, Dustin Lance Black, in 2013 changed everything. It taught him that vulnerability doesn't equate to weakness and that diving shouldn't be the only thing that defines him. Sam Riley/WBD Tom Daley for his documentary, '1.6 Seconds' Tom Daley for his documentary, '1.6 Seconds' 'I think it was realizing that once you meet your person, you kind of have to have to be able to be vulnerable and share your thoughts and feelings,' Daley tells PEOPLE exclusively. After losing his father in May 2011 to brain cancer, the diver felt alone in his experience. Not knowing who to confide in, Daley unconsciously went into 'autopilot.' 'I don't know what I was thinking but I went to training the next day, I went to the national championships 10 days later,' he reveals in his new documentary 1.6 Seconds. 'I just kept going because I didn't know anything else. I didn't have anything or anyone else. I was alone.' Advertisement Daley coped by suppressing his emotions, pushing aside his grief to focus entirely on diving. He immersed himself in the sport, using its structure and intensity as a way to avoid the pain he wasn't ready to confront. 'I think my way of doing it was compartmentalizing everything and kind of like shoving it to one side without actually thinking about it properly,' Daley says. 'So for me, that was something that I found to be a struggle, but once I got into the swing of it and was able to actually start opening up and talking about things, learning that it's okay to struggle and that you're not a burden when you offload those struggles onto other people.' Charlotte Garner Tom Daley for his documentary '1.6 Seconds' Tom Daley for his documentary '1.6 Seconds' Shortly after winning his first medal at the London 2012 Olympics, Daley met Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black at a dinner party in 2013. Advertisement That same year, Daley publicly revealed that he was bisexual in a YouTube video. The pair later got married in 2017 at Bovey Castle in Devon, not far from Daley's hometown of Plymouth. He says with Black as his 'sounding board,' he felt grounded and safe to express himself once more. 'I was realizing that there was so much of my life that I had shut down just to be able to cope, that it was really special to have somebody that could bring out that side of you,' he tells PEOPLE. Unfortunately, the 2016 Rio Olympics marked what Daley labeled an 'all-time low' in his diving career. Going in expecting a gold medal, he instead came away with bronze in the men's synchronized 10m platform event. Advertisement Overwhelmed by the thought that his hard work might never lead to standing at the top of the podium, Daley was on the brink of tears. Black helped him see beyond the disappointment and reconnect with the bigger picture. 'He said to me: 'Your story doesn't end here. This isn't over for you. Maybe you weren't meant to win an Olympic gold medal here in Rio because your future kid was meant to see you win an Olympic gold medal,' ' Daley recalls in the doc. Since then, Daley and Black have built a family together, welcoming two sons via surrogate — Robbie in 2018 and Phoenix in 2023. Robbie was named in honor of Daley's late father. Advertisement After another four years of training, Daley and his partner Matty Lee won gold in the men's synchronized 10m platform diving event at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. He also won a bronze in the individual 10m platform. Daley then took silver in the men's synchronized 10-meter platform at the 2024 Paris Olympics, with his husband and sons proudly cheering from the stands. 'He fell in love with a sport that had both beauty and athleticism. A sport where he could practice his perfectionism,' Black says in the documentary. 'A sport that takes place in 1.6 seconds and in that time, a myriad of things have to happen right.' Advertisement Feeling content and proud of his diving career — he competed in a total of five Olympic games and won one gold, one silver and three bronze medals — Daley retired in 2024 to focus on being a husband and father. 'Once you find that person, it really does help shift the way that you can deal with everything,' Daley tells PEOPLE. 1.6 Seconds is now streaming on Max globally and on in the U.S. Read the original article on People
The Sun
05-06-2025
- Health
- The Sun
Tom Daley was bullied so horrifically he received threats of broken legs and was given classroom key to escape
TOM DALEY once ruled the world of diving after becoming an Olympic champion. But in a candid interview and documentary, Daley has opened up on his personal struggles to get to that point, including bullying, eating disorders and the loss of his father. 4 4 4 The now-retired Daley, 31, won five medals for Team GB across five Olympic Games, including gold for the 10-metre synchro in 2021. His long list of accolades also included being named world champion twice, but perhaps his greatest prize now is his loving family with husband, Dustin Lance Black, and two boys, Robbie and Phoenix. In the new documentary, " 1.6 seconds", Daley has opened up the career struggles that have shaped him into the person he is today. And also speaking to People, the Brit has reflected on both the good and bad parts of his life. Speaking in the documentary, Daley says: "My whole life has been about diving. My whole life has been about perfecting those 1.6 seconds. "I spend four years training for something that goes by in less than 10 seconds in total. And I wouldn't change a thing. It's been the best 23 years that I can imagine." At the age of just 14, Daley became the second-youngest British male Olympian when he made his debut at the Beijing Olympics, but had started diving aged seven. And despite having the support of a whole nation, back at school, Daley had begun to feel unsafe due to bullying. The horrific bullying saw Daley called names and even saw kids threaten to break his legs, with the situation getting so bad that he and his friends were given a key to allow them to lock themselves in a classroom to escape other students at lunchtime. In the documentary, he recalls: "I don't think people realise how much it impacted me because I didn't really talk about it. Tom Daley breaks down in tears as he retires live on BBC after returning home from Paris 2024 Olympics "I was almost embarrassed about the fact that people were mean to me at school. I feel so sorry for that kid that had to explain what was going on." Daley publicly spoke about his bullying at the age of 13, but now believes he should have been "more conservative" with what he shared due to it making the situation even more overwhelming and painful. In 2011, Daley had to fight his way through an eating disorder after being told to lose weight by the performance director at British Diving, which was all he could think about going into London 2012. Daley said: "It was the first time where I felt that I was being looked at and judged not for how I did in the diving pool but for how I looked. "I took some quite drastic measures to make sure that the food did not stay in my stomach... "Every time I made a decision about what I was going to eat, if I was going to eat it and then get myself so hungry that I would end up eating so much and binging to the point where I was then so guilty — that I then had to do something about that." Daley admits his struggles were not helped by his internal beliefs about masculinity where guys, "didn't have eating disorders, didn't have any problems with their mental health," and "were meant to be these macho things that get on with anything and you just keep going". As a result, Daley felt isolated, a problem which was only deepened with the tragic loss of his father, Robert, from brain cancer just days after he turned 17. On his grief, Daley says: "I think there was something about when he was gone that I think in turn, probably did have something to do with all that I've faced. "The feeling like I had to face it alone because I didn't want to upset anyone else or bother anyone else because they were already going through enough." His father had kept the seriousness of his illness hidden from his children for as long as he could, as he was determined not to let it overshadow his son's growing success. In the documentary, Daley reflects: "He didn't care how well I did. He didn't care if I came last. He didn't care if I bombed out. Like there was no concern about the outcome. "He just wanted to be there.… He just loved seeing me dive. He was the one person that I could go to to speak about anything and everything and feel like I had someone on my side. "I didn't just lose my dad, because he was much more than that. 'He was my biggest cheerleader, my best friend, mentor. I mean, our whole life came to a standstill." However, Daley says he understands his father's decision to keep it close to heart, saying to People: "Now that I think about it as a parent, it would be like trying to explain that to my oldest son. "And, you know, if one of the kids knew, then they were all going to know. As a parent, you want to protect your kids from anything that's going into that." He added: "So I just think… that's part of the reason for the documentary and like how grateful I am to have all of that archival footage. "All of those moments… forever immortalised by being able to actually have copies of that digitised." Daley's world of isolation came crashing down when he met his husband and eventually started a family. In 1.6 seconds, he explains: "I finally found perspective, and I didn't put all of my self-worth and self-esteem based on how well I did in diving. "I started to realise that I was more than just a diver. [I am] a husband, a father, a friend, a son." Despite the struggles he has been through, the Olympic legend, father and husband says: "You know, there's much of my life formed and shaped because of the experiences I went through — the good and the bad. "Those things formed me and created the person I am today."
