Jocelyn Wildenstein may not necessarily be a household name, but she has an undeniably recognizable face.
Nicknamed “Catwoman,” the New York City socialite became a tabloid fixture in the 1990s during her divorce from her billionaire art dealer husband Alec Wildenstein, with her distinct facial features keeping her in the spotlight. Though she was well known, she rarely spoke publicly, a choice she told Paper in 2018 was deliberate.
“When the children were growing, I didn’t want to speak about the family. I didn’t want it to fall back on them,” she said. “But now they are adults, so I am free and can speak freely. But before so many events happening, their godfather died, then their father died, then the divorce. So it was a lot for some 16 and 17-year-old kids. Now they’re grown up.”
Here’s everything to know about Jocelyn Wildenstein, from the start of her fame to her life today.
Who is Jocelyn Wildenstein?
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Jocelyn was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, where she would spend her childhood summers swimming by a local lake and winters skiing in the nearby mountains. She told Interview magazine that her childhood was “fantastic,” but it was in Paris, where she moved with her then-boyfriend, Swiss film director Cyril Piguet, that she developed her love for glamour.
She also had a love for Africa, describing it to New York Magazine as “paradise” for its sense of adventure and wildlife. In 1977, when she was 31, she visited Ol Jogi, a wildlife conservancy and ranch, in Kenya and met Alec Wildenstein, partial (and later full) owner of Ol Jogi and a billionaire heir to an art dealing, horse breeding and business fortune. Jocelyn said that the night they met, they were hunting and unable to speak, but shared their first kiss. Days later, Jocelyn returned to Paris, where she was then living with another boyfriend, Italian filmmaker Sergio Gobbi, and Alec to New York, where he lived.
Jocelyn told New York Magazine that she and Alec missed one another and that he sent enough white orchids to her favorite Paris salon to completely fill it and make it difficult to get inside. He visited her in Paris soon after and proposed over dinner. They married on April 30, 1978, in Las Vegas, mere months after their first meeting.
Jocelyn and Alec were together for nearly 20 years and shared son Alec Jr. and daughter Diane, with Jocelyn boasting to Vanity Fair that they usually spent about $1 million every month on their lavish lifestyle.
The family flew under the radar — until Alec filed for divorce in April 1997. That September, Jocelyn alleged that she found him with aspiring Russian model Yelena Jarikova at one of their New York City homes. She told police that Alec waved a gun at her and he was arrested, The New York Times reported. Alec was released on his own recognizance and ordered to stay away from Jocelyn and barred from entering the Manhattan home they shared. Since their split, Jocelyn became a household name.
Why did Jocelyn Wildenstein have so much surgery?
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Alec claimed that he and Jocelyn both got some of their respective first plastic surgeries together about a year after they got married, opting for his-and-hers eye lifts, per Vanity Fair. After that, Jocelyn reportedly continued undergoing procedures, later claiming that part of why she got some facelift surgeries was because Alec “hates to be with old people.”
After several procedures over the years, Jocelyn’s face earned her the public nickname of “Catwoman,” something she doesn’t necessarily dislike. However, she has insisted some of her facial features are partially natural. She told Vanity Fair, “The lynx has perfect eyes. If I show you pictures of my grandmother, what you see is these eyes — cat eyes — and high cheekbones.”
“I don’t think I’ve known her when she wasn’t healing from something,” a friend of Jocelyn once said.
What happened during Jocelyn Wildenstein’s divorce?
Alec and Jocelyn’s divorce proceedings lasted nearly two years, and the estranged couple aired a lot of dirty laundry in court, including Alec’s allegation that Jocelyn was a courtesan for Paris’ famous brothel owner Madame Claude before they met (which Jocelyn denied).
At the end of the case, Jocelyn was awarded $2.5 billion, plus an additional $100 million annually for the next 13 years, according to Reuters. In another uniquely Wildenstein twist, the judge in their divorce case reportedly ordered Jocelyn not to spend any of the settlement money on cosmetic surgeries.
In 2018, Jocelyn told Paper that her split from Alec was sad considering they had such a long and loving history together. She also blamed him for public speculation about her having plastic surgery.
“We were doing a lot of things and working in the arts together, which is a lovely job to do. We were also building a lot in Africa, so we had a great time together,” she said. “And I don’t know, you think you know a person, and then suddenly something happens and it’s not the same person at all anymore, and you have a hard time believing they could change so much. You see such a different side.”
Is Jocelyn Wildenstein married?
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Jocelyn is currently engaged to her longtime love, fashion designer Lloyd Klein. While they’re inseparable now, their relationship has been tumultuous in the past.
Jocelyn and Klein began dating in 2003 after meeting at New York Fashion Week, with Canada-born Klein telling PEOPLE that they would frequently converse in French in the early days of their relationship. Their romance got rocky around 2008, he recalled, when Jocelyn sold her New York City home and moved into a unit at the Trump Apartments. Klein alleged that Jocelyn would at times have violent mood swings, which came to a head in December 2016, when Klein claimed Jocelyn was under “financial duress.”
“She went into a rage,” Klein said, adding that Jocelyn allegedly threw a burning candle at his face, scratched him with her nails and even tried to stab him in the chest with a “small” pair of scissors.
Jocelyn called 911, and police arrested Klein and charged him with assault with intent to cause physical injury, robbery, mischief with the intent to damage property and grand larceny for allegedly stealing an iPhone and a credit card. Jocelyn, in turn, was arrested for two counts of assault. Authorities dropped the charges against Klein in January 2017, citing a lack of evidence, and the New York Post reported that Jocelyn’s charges were dismissed the following month amid a reconciliation between the couple.
In July 2017, Klein and Jocelyn told the Daily Mail they’d gotten engaged and that their respective arrests made them realize how much they missed one another when they were apart. Their bliss was somewhat short-lived: Page Six reported that the couple were arrested once more in early November 2017 after getting into a physical altercation but reconciled later that month.
Where is Jocelyn Wildenstein now?
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After a series of financial issues, including nearly being evicted from one of her apartments, Jocelyn filed for bankruptcy protection in 2018, according to Page Six.
In June 2023, Jocelyn told The Telegraph that her lack of funds was due to being cut off from her massive divorce settlement, which she alleged had been “completely cut off” for the past eight years. She and Klein said they planned to create a documentary series about her life, with Klein having another goal as well: “I want to have a movie series on Jocelyn’s life, and I would like to have Jennifer Lawrence as a young Jocelyn.” His choice for Alec? Fellow Oscar winner Rami Malek.
In December 2023, Jocelyn told Interview magazine that she traveled frequently from Miami to New York City, Paris and Canada, and that she obtained her commercial pilot’s license and enjoyed flying. “I had a lot of fun,” she said of her life post-divorce from Alec. “I found freedom, and instead of having to behave according to a program, I could suddenly have the freedom to appreciate it.”
