Brooklyn Beckham Is All Grown Up And Has Had His Fair Share Of Controversy
This post references domestic violence, racism, and honor-based abuse.
When it comes to nepo baby discourse, there's one name that has a tendency to dominate the conversation: Brooklyn Beckham. The oldest son of celebrity soccer star David Beckham and Spice Girl member Victoria Beckham has become a source of fascination because of the liminal space in which he resides. He doesn't seem content to exert minimal effort by using his parents' vast wealth to enjoy a playboy lifestyle. But unlike some other famous nepo babies — Maya Hawke, Jack Quaid, and Willow Smith are just a few random examples — Brooklyn has struggled to use the fame that is his birthright to launch a successful career.
Brooklyn's best bet might be to pen a Hollywood tell-all someday, as he's spent a lot of time around the glitterati. Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley are his godparents; he went on playdates with Suri Cruise and the sons of Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale as a child; and Victoria told Vogue that Tom Brady taught him how to play American football. Brooklyn and his heiress wife, Nicola Peltz, also became such good pals with Selena Gomez that Peltz joked to Cosmopolitan, "Oh my god. We're like, 'Yeah, we are a throuple.' We are all three best friends."
But while his surname alone is enough to earn him access to the exclusive world of celebrity, Brooklyn seems determined to transform himself from just another celeb kid into a nepotism success story. He's even willing to stir up some controversy along the way.
Victoria Beckham dispelled a rumour about his name
Brooklyn Beckham's name has a nice ring to it, but some people have long suspected that David Beckham and Victoria Beckham didn't just choose it because they like the way it sounds. In 2015, the Mirror suggested that Brooklyn bears the name of the location of his conception, but this is just internet lore. In her memoir, "Learning to Fly," Victoria shared her actual thought process when it came to naming her firstborn. "I knew he could end up a footballer, so it had to be a name that was a bit blokey," she wrote. "I had always liked the name Brooke and then we suddenly thought about Brooklyn. I'd always liked it as a place — it's very multi-cultural, very grounded." After making her moniker choice, Victoria serendipitously remembered that she'd been in New York City when she learned that she had a baby on board.
David and Victoria's descriptions of Brooklyn's early personality differed. "He's a happy baby, he never stops smiling and eating," David told the Mirror in 1999. But in her book, Victoria recalled, "Brooklyn wasn't an easy baby. He had terrible colic, always in pain, always crying." However, she later learned that a potential cause of his distress was a severe lactose allergy.
Brooklyn got his first taste of the spotlight at four months old when his parents gave him a big job, and nepotism was totally acceptable for that particular role: He was the ringbearer at their 1999 wedding.
David and Victoria Beckham's fear for their son
As David Beckham's son, there was some expectation that Brooklyn Beckham would pursue a career as a professional soccer player. He was a toddler when Victoria Beckham published "Learning to Fly," but in it, she wrote, "Brooklyn really is unbelievable with a football even now ... The first few steps that he took in the kitchen, he stood up and kicked a teddy bear that was lying there across the kitchen floor." She also expressed her fear that Brooklyn would feel immense pressure to prove himself a soccer prodigy. In a 2012 interview with Esquire (via HuffPost), David confessed to having the same concern for all three of his sons. "They go for try-outs and people automatically think David Beckham's son is going to bend the ball in the top corner at the age of six," he said.
By 2009, then-10-year-old Brooklyn was adept enough with a soccer ball that he was teaching underprivileged children how to bend it like Beckham — or at least showing them a few basic soccer skills. Per the Daily Mail, he became a Save The Children ambassador like his mom, and they visited schoolchildren in one of Kentucky's most impoverished counties.
Brooklyn even joined Arsenal's youth academy, but he ultimately decided not to devote himself to soccer past age 15. In 2022, he explained to Bustle that the pressure to match his dad's legacy became too great. He added, "I'm a Pisces. Sensitive."
He made his modeling debut
When Brooklyn Beckham's parents started worrying that he was getting spoiled by the world of privilege he was born into, they decided to take action. On "The Late Late Show," David Beckham revealed that they made him get a job when he was 14 years old. Brooklyn then had to spend his own money on the shoes he was always begging his parents to buy. "Much to his dismay, we packed him off to the French café, and he works there every Saturday and Sunday," David said. But young Brooklyn was already finding new financial avenues to pursue. He was 15 when he made his modeling debut on the cover of Man About Town magazine's Spring-slash-Summer 2014 issue. The following year, a source told the Mirror that he'd been signed by an unnamed modeling agency.
When Brooklyn was younger, Victoria Beckham tried explaining to him why he couldn't go out without attracting a swarm of shutterbugs. "When photographers take pictures of him, we just say it's because he's so cute, like his daddy," she said in a 2003 BBC News interview. But after Brooklyn embraced being in front of a camera as a teen, some modeling agency insiders told The Telegraph that he was lacking the "it" factor necessary to make it in the industry, suggesting that he would only get job offers because of his famous name. In 2017, Brooklyn himself confessed to Sky News, "I really am not a model."
Brooklyn Beckham's photography career caused outrage
In 2015, Brooklyn Beckham posed for the cover of Miss Vogue and told the magazine that he wanted to study photography in college. The following year, the luxury label Burberry hired him as the photographer for an ad campaign. Beckham was just 16, and some experienced photographers couldn't believe that he'd been handed a gig that big. "It's sheer nepotism," professional photographer Chris Floyd said in an interview with The Guardian. But a Burberry exec argued that Beckham's Instagram photography proved that he was capable enough for the job. Beckham's godfather also weighed in. "It's like when you do a runway show and you send all the great stuff down that doesn't make it to the shops but it gets in the papers — it's the publicity," Elton John explained to Metro.
Beckham told Sky News that his experience posing in front of the camera had helped him hone his photography skills, as it allowed him to watch established pros in action. He even released his own photography book, "What I See," in 2017. But some Twitter critics were unimpressed by his blurry images and captions, one of which read, "Elephants in Kenya. So hard to photograph, but incredible to see." As for his human subjects, they didn't always seem to respect his artistic process. "Sometimes I just approach [strangers] and don't even ask and take their photo so I get a cool reaction, like if they're mad at me," Brooklyn told W magazine.
He's been accused of racist behavior
In 2018, Brooklyn Beckham caused an outcry on Instagram after sharing a photo he snapped during a trip to Italy. Per iHeart, it showed a group of Asian people who were either locals or sightseers enjoying the same sights that he was there to see. "No place like Italy innit," Beckham captioned the image. Some of his followers took this to mean that he found the presence of the people in the picture unwelcome. And if he assumed that they weren't locals, why was it okay for him to visit the country but not them? The backlash got so bad that Beckham deleted the image and made his Instagram private.
A year prior, some of his followers had accused him of cultural appropriation. Per Harper's Bazaar, when Beckham got tattooed for the first time, the design he chose was the profile of a Native American chief wearing a feather headdress. In a since-deleted post, he revealed that it was inspired by his dad's similar tattoo. The ink was even done by the same artist, Mark Mahoney.
That same year, Beckham partied at the mecca of cultural appropriation — Coachella (we're guessing he saw a lot of actual feather headdresses there). The Sun reported that he was spotted flirting with Hailey Bieber, who wasn't dating future hubby Justin Bieber at the time. Notably, Hailey had once tweeted, "Brooklyn Beckham knows I'll be waiting for him when he turns 18 right."
Chloe Grace Moretz didn't appreciate his post-split PDA
One of Brooklyn Beckham's earliest high-profile romances was with former child star Chloë Grace Moretz. He was first romantically linked to the "Kick-ass" actor in 2014, and the pair dated on and off for years. After a long break and a reconciliation in 2017, Moretz told Us Weekly, "I think we chose each other. ... It's just one of those things, you come back and it's like no time spent away from each other at all." Beckham and Moretz split for good the following year, sometime after Valentine's Day.
By April 2018, Beckham and Lexi Wood were spotted getting cozy, with ET sharing photos of the two kissing. Not long afterward, Moretz referenced the Cardi B song "Be Careful" on her Instagram Stories. The track is about infidelity, so was it potentially meant to be a hint that she suspected Beckham of being unfaithful during their relationship? We may never know for sure, but Moretz did seem to throw some shade at her ex when she was asked about him during an August 2018 interview with The Times. By then, Beckham had already dated and gotten dumped by musician Lexy Panterra, per ET. After complaining about getting notifications on her phone about what she called "a certain relationship," Moretz said, "I'm not a big fan of PDAs in general. I personally don't want to see people posted all over my phone making out."
His photography internship reportedly didn't go well
In 2017, Brooklyn Beckham told W magazine that his mom encouraged him to go to school in New York to study photography, and he enrolled in Parsons School of Design. He also landed an internship working alongside Nick Knight, who had once photographed his mother for the cover of Vogue. But in 2018, Brooklyn dropped out of Parsons after a year. "It sounds as if he was truly homesick and was feeling lonely out there," a source told the Mirror. "He adores his family." Victoria Beckham was reportedly happy that he returned home.
As far as his dreams of being a professional photographer were concerned, all was not yet lost. He had scored another internship with the renowned British photographer Rankin, and in 2019, sources told The Sun that Brooklyn was an enthusiastic study. However, an insider also said, "Everyone knew Brooklyn's work needed fine tuning but no one knew his knowledge of the simplest tasks was so off ... He's lacking in most areas." A source even cracked a cruel joke about how his only talent was being able to push the shutter button to at least take a photo.
Brooklyn eventually gave up pursuing photography as a career — and maybe tried to rewrite history a bit by downplaying its importance in his life. "I still have all my film cameras, but now it's just more of a fun thing to do. They were kind of all hobbies," he told Variety in 2022.
His fiery exchanges with Hana Cross
In December 2018, Brooklyn Beckham debuted his relationship with model Hana Cross. Naturally, he photographed her and shared the results with his Instagram followers. The consensus seemed to be that Cross bore a striking resemblance to Victoria Beckham during her Posh years, according to Elle. But while Brooklyn and his muse made some pretty amazing art together, the spice they brought to each other's lives wasn't always the good kind. According to The Sun, they were spotted having a heated argument after watching a Yungblood performance in March 2019. "Brooklyn had sunk a few beers and ended up getting into a row with Hana," a source said. The following month, the Irish Mirror published photos of the couple looking distressed as they appeared to shout and argue inside a car.
In yet another emotionally charged moment, they reportedly had a blow-out fight at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2019. They were spotted yelling at each other while dining outdoors at the Hotel Martinez. "Hana confronted Brooklyn and lashed out, and security waded in," a source told The Sun. All of this explosive behavior reportedly made it difficult for Victoria and David Beckham to support their son's relationship. "They're hoping this is just a phase, and he will soon focus entirely on his photography career which is now really beginning to flourish," said an insider. Well, at least Brooklyn's parents got part of their wish when he and Cross parted ways in September 2019.
The ex who blasted his marriage plans
After his relationship with Hana Cross ended, Brooklyn Beckham was spotted with his ex Lexy Panterra, per E! News. But soon, he found himself desperately smitten with Nicola Peltz. Beckham had actually met her before at Coachella. "We really didn't get along. He had a girlfriend and I had a boyfriend," Nicola told Wonderland of their 2017 encounter. While The Sun reported that he'd been spotted with Hailey Bieber at that year's festival, the Daily Mail published photos of Beckham posing with Panterra.
When fate brought Nicola and Beckham back together in 2019, they fell for each other fast that fall. The following year, they spent the beginning of the pandemic together at the Palm Beach estate of Nicola's billionaire dad, Nelson Peltz, and her mom, Claudia Heffner, per Bustle. After getting a small taste of domestic bliss with Nicola, Beckham decided that he wanted so much more of it and proposed in July 2020.
In an interview with The U.S. Sun, Panterra weighed in on her ex's marriage plans. "Honestly, Brooklyn is not ready for that. He is very young and way too immature. ... He has a new chick every month," she said. She also revealed that nothing romantic happened between her and Beckham at Coachella in 2017 but confirmed that she and Beckham had briefly reconnected before he started dating Nicola. "We are not together anymore because of his immature ways and him not being a good friend," she said.
A domestic violence nonprofit blasted his behavior
After they went Instagram official, Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz began regularly sharing photos of themselves together on the social media platform. There were kisses and intimate selfies galore, but a September 2020 photo of Beckham grabbing Peltz's neck didn't sit well with some. Peltz was laughing in the image, which the "Bates Motel" actor posted on her own Instagram account.
But the Iranian & Kurdish Women's Rights Organization (IKWRO), a nonprofit that helps Afghan, North African, and Middle Eastern girls and women who are victims of domestic violence or at risk of being victimized in the U.K., didn't view the playful pic as a laughing matter. "Even if it's a joke it is disgusting in my opinion," said the charity's founder, Diana Nammi, per the Daily Mail. The image struck a nerve with Nammi because many female victims of honor-based violence are killed by strangulation. "I think this is sending a very wrong message," she said. But Peltz ignored Nammi's call to delete the picture.
The following month, Peltz celebrated one year of dating Beckham by letting everyone know what a great guy he is. "You have the most beautiful heart I've ever known and anyone in your life is lucky to be in it," she captioned two Instagram photos of herself and her boyfriend taking a bath together. The images showed a more tender side of Beckham; in one of them, he kissed Peltz on the forehead while gently cradling her neck.
If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.
Brooklyn Beckham's cooking didn't buy him a car
Life was looking pretty good for Brooklyn Beckham in September 2021; he was engaged to a gorgeous heiress and got to attend the Met Gala with her. However, the exclusive event's livestream host for Vogue, "Nope" star Keke Palmer, didn't seem to know who he was (via Cosmopolitan). And when Palmer asked Beckham where he was from, he missed the opportunity to show her his "Made in England" tattoo.
Little did Palmer know that she'd met a culinary star in the making. The following month, Beckham surprised "Today" viewers by appearing in a cooking segment. He chose to make a breakfast sandwich — and got brutally roasted on Twitter for leaving the bread untoasted (among other things). "Was this meant to be a joke?" one netizen wrote.
But the tweet heat didn't keep Beckham out of the kitchen, and he found himself spinning on the Twit spit again when TikToker Daniel Mac spotted him driving his $1.2 million McLaren P1 sportscar in August 2022. Mac filmed himself as he said to Beckham, "Hey, man! What do you do for a living? Your car's awesome!" Beckham replied, "I'm a chef." In response to the video, one commenter joked that Beckham was actually able to afford the vehicle because he's a "C.H.E.F – Child (of) Handsome Ex-Footballer." Beckham later admitted to Bustle, "I'm not a professional chef — at all. I've never said that. I never would say that."
His costly cooking show
Brooklyn Beckham didn't have to become a professional chef to land his own Facebook Watch cooking show, "Cookin' with Brooklyn." Instead, he invited some of his famous friends from the culinary world, including Nobu Matsuhisa, to teach him their skills as he filmed the series in 2021. Insiders told the New York Post that the large production team Beckham hired to help him with the series was more like one you'd find working on a television show, and it reportedly cost around $100,000 per episode to produce. "Apparently the guy has to be shown really super basic things and has a 'cheat sheet' of expressions from whisk to par-boil, several illustrated with pictures," one source said.
But what Beckham lacked in ability, he made up for in enthusiasm and determination. He'd discovered his passion for filming cooking videos during the pandemic, recalling to Vogue, "Nicola started videoing me, and I started posting it, and people started to really like it." After he launched his show, he kept filming shorter videos for Instagram — even though they provided foodies with plenty of fodder to roast his culinary skills with, such as his decision to cook while wearing his dog in a sling. He's also been criticized for using expensive ingredients in his recipes. "I wish I could afford the idea of 'no such thing as too much truffle,'" read one response to Beckham's demonstration of how he generously sprinkles shaved truffle on a tagliatelle pasta dish.
His climate change hypocrisy
In his role as a Together Band ambassador, Brooklyn Beckham provided a platform for young climate activists to share their urgent messages about how climate change is harming the planet. In a September 2021 video profiling one such activist, Beckham revealed that he attended his first climate march in 2019. Like many young people, he's clearly concerned about climate change. He's also in the unique position to contribute more to global warming than a vast majority of most people his age. Per The Mirror, this is what he did when he used a private plane during the holidays in December 2020. When a passenger chooses to fly on a private jet, they're causing up to 14% percent more carbon pollution than a commercial passenger, per Transport & Environment.
When GQ talked to Beckham about his environmentalism in March 2021, he didn't mention his carbon footprint and focused on water conversation instead — he was, after all, promoting Pepe Jeans' Wiser Future collection, which uses less water during production than your average denim clothing. "I do the basics, like not letting the water run when I brush my teeth, measure out my water for tea, and I do not let the water run when I shower," he said. In addition to wearing Pepe Jeans, Beckham told Vogue that he borrows his father-in-law's jeans, so that's another way to cut down on denim water waste, right?
His lucrative Superdry contract didn't last long
In November 2021, Brooklyn Beckham got to put the ol' modeling skills to use when the popular clothing company Superdry offered him a £1 million contract to be one of its brand ambassadors. "This is a huge opportunity for Brooklyn and will cement him as a real name in the men's fashion world," a source told The Sun. But it didn't take long for his role to come under scrutiny. In January 2022, Beckham shared an Instagram photo of himself rocking a pair of Superdry's vegan sneakers. Per the Daily Mail, a number of his followers responded to the post by pointing out that Beckham has confessed to being a big meat eater. Just days earlier, he had revealed that he particularly loves a juicy steak in one of his Instagram videos, so there was arguably a conflict of interest there.
Eight months after Beckham got the Superdry job, the company announced that it was parting ways with the red meat enthusiast. "We always review the ambassadors who feature in our campaigns and decided to work with a different range of talent," a rep for the brand said, per the Daily Mail. But someone out there had faith in Beckham's ability to cook up something else just as big; in March 2022, he signed with the Hollywood talent agency CAA.
Those family feud rumors reportedly angered his dad
Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz's April 2022 wedding at the Palm Beach home of Peltz's parents was the talk of the tabloids long after it was over, and it wasn't because the couple's vows were just that moving. In August 2022, sources told Page Six that there was a lot of bad blood between Victoria Beckham and Peltz because Posh Spice was being iced out of helping her flesh-and-blood and the woman joining brand Beckham from planning the wedding. In an interview with Grazia, Peltz denied that any family feuding had been going on and shared a theory about the source of the rumors to the contrary. She explained that she had wanted to wear one of her mother-in-law's designs down the aisle, but Victoria was unable to help her make this happen. "A few days went by and I didn't hear anything. Victoria called my mom and said her atelier couldn't make it," she said. So, Valentino it was.
David Beckham was reportedly livid over Peltz talking to the press about the dress drama and confronted his son about it. "I don't think David has ever lost his temper with Brooklyn or had cause to talk to him harshly, but that has now finally happened," a source told the Daily Mail. "He had it out with him and told him: 'We don't do this in our family — and you know that we don't do this in our family."
His over-the-top tattoo tributes to his wife
Brooklyn Beckham is 100 percent that wife guy, and he wants to make sure that the world knows it. He can't seem to stop getting tattoo tributes to Nicola Peltz, such as the love letter from her that he had lovingly inked on his upper back. He got his wedding vows tattooed on his upper arm in tiny script, but they still stretched from his armpit down to his elbow pit.
One of Brooklyn's most famous bits of body art inspired by Nicola is probably that of her peepers, which peek out over the top of his shirts and stare into the soul of anyone standing behind him. When Brooklyn took to Instagram to show off the love letter underneath them in 2021, his younger brother Cruz Beckham joked that the unblinking artwork bore more of a likeness to the eyes of Nicola's brother, Will Peltz (via the Daily Star).
Brooklyn got his wife's eyes tattooed on him again in 2023, but this time, they were located on his arm, making it possible for him to gaze into their inky depths anytime he likes. They were also part of a portrait that included the rest of Nicola's face. "I have like over 20 [tattoos] dedicated to her," Brooklyn told E! News. "... They're very addictive, especially when you love someone you just want to cover everywhere."
How Brooklyn Beckham feels about the nepo baby criticism
Brooklyn Beckham doesn't feel any pressure to find his true calling. "It's OK to be 25, 26, or even 30 and not know what you're doing yet. You know what I mean?" he told Bustle. This is actually something his mom has some experience with. While performing with the Spice Girls made Victoria Beckham a global superstar, it wasn't until she launched her clothing line that she felt a real sense of accomplishment. "I worked very hard, but it took a long time for me to find something to say, 'Oh, I'm not bad at this.' And I've found that with what I'm doing now," she told Vogue in 2012.
Posh had to ignore the haters and do her thing, and it seems that Brooklyn is doing the same. "I think people are always going to say rubbish, I've kind of gotten to that point where I'm going to get it forever and that's totally fine," he told BuzzFeed. "... I'm happy, and working hard, and trying to do good things."
He also has some pretty powerful people rooting for him, and we're not just talking about his family; Gordon Ramsay defended Brooklyn's cooking career to the Daily Mail, saying that he was pleased to see him pursuing his passion. So, for a nepo baby like Brooklyn, the world really is his oyster, and the wannabe chef can keep dressing it in different ways until he finds the one that tastes just right.