Mischa Barton's publicist told her to sleep with 30-year-old Leonardo Dicaprio when she was a teenager

Once again, Leonardo DiCaprio's dating history is making headlines, and a newly resurfaced interview with The O.C star Mischa Barton isn't really helping the cause.

Mischa, now 37, once revealed that she was told to sleep with Leo to boost her career, even though she was 11 years his junior.

The All My Children actor made the claim in a 2005 interview.

Mischa Barton has been romantically linked to a few big names over the years, including musician Cisco Adler and model James Abercrombie, but apparently her team really wanted her to get it on with Leonardo to help her get ahead.

Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy

At the time, Leonardo had just called things off with model Gisele Bündchen - who was 23 at the time - and Mischa was just 19 years old.

Sharing Mischa's decades-old claim to social media, one Twitter user jibed: "This aged well."

The text appears to come from a paraphrased interview with magazine Harpers and Queen - now known as Harper's Bazaar - published by Female First.

Twitter

Barton claimed in the interview that in 2005, when she was 19 and DiCaprio was 30, her then-publicist Craig Schneider told her at a photoshoot in Malibu: "For the sake of your career, go and sleep with that man."

Barton was far from keen, responding: "Isn't Leo, like, 30 or something?"

AJ Pics / Alamy Stock Photo

LADbible has contacted Schneider for a comment.

It sounds like Leo had no part to play in this weird set-up - though his involvement in the resurfaced story is rather unfortunate timing.

In case you missed out on the drama and were wondering why this years-old interview is cropping up again - besides the whole story being incredibly dodgy - fans noticed last year that Leo has never dated a woman over the age of 25.

Leo, who is now 48, got a fair bit of flack in 2022 when it was confirmed that he had called it a day with model Camila Morrone not long after she turned the big 2-5.

Social media users realised that Leo has never actually dated a woman older than 25, with him breaking up with Bar Refaeli, Kelly Rohrbach, Nina Agdal and Morrone before they turned 26.

Since then, people have been obsessed with the Catch Me If You Can star's dating habits and are desperate to see whether or not the admittedly strange pattern will continue.