Inside Owen Wilson's complicated relationship with his baby daughter Lyla whom he has never met
In Amazon Prime Video’s upcoming “mind-bending love story”, ‘Bliss’, Greg, played by Owen Wilson, meets the mysterious Isabel (Salma Hayek), a woman living on the streets and convinced that the polluted, broken world around them is just a computer simulation. Wilson is an actor who needs no introduction. From ‘Marley and Me’ to ‘Starsky & Hutch’, to ‘Wedding Crashers’, we are more than familiar with his handsome face and charming ways. But there is an aspect of the actor’s life that remains somewhat dark -- his relationship with his daughter with his ex Varunie Vongsvirates.
Vongsvirates and Wilson were together for several years. They were first spotted together in 2014. The two then arrived together and walked the red carpet in 2017 for the premiere of ‘Father Figures’. But then things went sour.
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Owen Wilson pays around $25,000 a month to support his baby daughter whom he has never met
In October 2018, Lyla Aranya Wilson was born. As per an Us Weekly report, despite the fact that Wilson and Vongsvirates had dated for nearly five years, he refused to see his daughter altogether. The magazine quoted a source saying then that Wilson “refuses to meet his daughter… He even checked the no visitation box in court in June... He does not want to visit [and does not] want any custody of her.”
“The baby looks just like Owen,” the source said. “She has fair skin, blonde hair and blue eyes,” adding that Wilson had “not contacted Varunie at all” after she gave birth nor during her pregnancy, despite the fact that they “dated for almost five years.”
In fact, in June 2018, Wilson voluntarily took a paternity test after Vongsvirates claimed she was pregnant with his child. “Owen has been a great father to his boys and has maintained a warm and close relationship with their mothers,” a source told Us Weekly at the time. “Of course, if a paternity test establishes that he is the father of another child, he will fulfill all of his obligations to support his child.” The paternity test reportedly revealed that “the alleged father is not excluded as the biological father of the fetus.”
Radar, however, reported in 2019 that things had gotten sour since he found out about the pregnancy. “When Varunie told Owen she was pregnant, he was not happy about it, and that was the last time they ever spoke,” said the source. “He changed his phone number. He’s never met his daughter and then he gave no heads up that he was changing his number.”
“Varunie’s mother passed away when she was still kind of young and impressionable. She knows what it’s like to grow up with one parent. She doesn’t want that to happen to her daughter,” the source told Radar. “She just wants her daughter to have a normal life. It didn’t work out between the two of them -- that happens -- but to abandon his child is rude and wrong.”
In January 2020 reports surfaced that claimed Wilson pays around $25,000 a month as child support for his daughter. As per court documents obtained by news websites, he had made a one-off payment of $70,000 to the mother in order to cover a night nurse, labor coach, and Vongsvirates' legal fees. On the documents, he had reportedly ticked the 'none' box under visitation rights but agreed to add his daughter to his Screen Actors Guild medical insurance.
Vongsvirates has sole custody of the child and can legally make decisions about Lyla's health, education, and welfare. In an earlier interview, Vongsvirates said about Wilson, "She's incredible, you're really missing out. She looks just like you. Lyla needs a father. It's ironic how [Owen] keeps getting these father roles, he's playing a father in his new movie, and he's never met his own daughter."
‘Bliss’ is scheduled to be released on February 5, 2021, only on Amazon Prime Video.