Annette Sharp: Elon Musk’s girlfriend Natasha Bassett’s links to Marilyn Monroe
The Aussie model and actress who has hit headlines for her relationship with Elon Musk has quite the fascination with troubled star Marilyn Monroe, writes Annette Sharp.
Entertainment
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The spectre of troubled Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe has never been far from Sydney actor Natasha Bassett, latest paramour of Elon Musk.
In 2012, a teenage Bassett looked to be channelling brunette ingenue Monroe for a Sydney Film Festival promotion, while Hollywood was introduced to a platinum Bassett for 2017’s Coen brothers film Hail Caesar!, in which she had a small cameo as a buxom blonde milkmaid.
A professed fan of Monroe’s, the actor paid tribute to the dead Gentlemen Prefer Blondes star on in June 2017 on social media: “Happy Birthday Norma Jeane (sic)! You will forever defy gravity.”
The post immediately drew comment from friends familiar with Bassett’s mother: “She does look like your Momma!” posted one, while another mused “I thought this was yr mama at first glance!”
“Momma” would no doubt agree, having posted her own etched rendering of young “Tash” to Facebook in 2012 depicting the then teenager, complete with facial beauty spot, as bombshell Monroe.
Bassett’s mother is self-styled luxury travel agent Jenny Bassett, a Sydney society fixture who started turning heads in the 1980s and 1990s thanks, largely, to her svelte figure and her relationships with a string of wealthy high-profile businessmen.
Among them was luxury car dealer Neville Crichton — present net worth about $300 million — with whom Bassett lived for a time and who is said to have paid her daughter’s SCEGGS fees even after the relationship broke down.
Another was former Gold Coast property developer-turned-stockbroker John Leaver, whose net worth has also been put at hundreds of millions, or was prior to 2015, when Leaver was caught in the nets of the ATO’s Project Wickenby and had to fork out $29 million.
But that’s chump change to Tesla co-founder Musk, the richest man on the planet, worth a whopping $300 billion.
History does not relate how Bassett, now in her late twenties, met Musk, but since relocating to the US some years ago both mother and daughter have spent ample time working the room at film events to advance the young actor’s career.
In 2015, when the Weinstein name wasn’t yet a dirty word, stage mum Bassett posted a glamorous shot of herself to social media at the Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills.
“The Weinsteins sure know how to throw a party,” Momma Bassett quipped.
Sources maintain Natasha met Musk, 50, ex of actor Amber Heard and recent ex of Canadian musician Grimes, years ago.
The couple is yet to confirm their relationship status after Bassett was sighted stepping from Musk’s private jet in LA last month.
Although Bassett’s natural father seems to have disappeared out of the actor’s story, he is former Double Bay dentist Don Tingey, to whom Jenny was married in the 1990s.
Sources last week maintained Tingey, who these days lives in Melbourne with a new partner following the break-up of his second marriage, never abandoned his eldest daughter but, rather, Bassett moved on, closing the door on any father-daughter relationship after first changing her daughter’s surname from Tingey to Bassett.
What has driven Bassett into the arms of older self-made man Musk may be all conjecture at this stage, but all the talk certainly can’t hurt Bassett’s profile.
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