Julia Fox makes no bones about who she is, or what she wants.
Shortly before finding fame in the 2019 movie “Uncut Gems,” the actress admitted on the “We Met At Acme” podcast: “I’m just really about money, and I like living comfortably, it’s difficult to balance that and a man in this town.”
Now, it seems, the former downtown party girl has found both.
In a romance made — and seemingly curated — for the tabloids, Fox, 31, is dating Kanye West after meeting the mercurial rapper on New Year’s Eve in Miami.
On Wednesday, the couple partied at Los Angeles celebrity haunt Delilah’s with Madonna, Floyd Mayweather, Evan Ross and West’s new bestie, former Tampa Bay Buccaneer Antonio Brown. Fox was dressed in low-slung leather pants that left nothing to the imagination.
“Julia and Kanye are kindred spirits: She’s really just a fame whore and he’s looking for someone to mold,” said one NYC socialite who knows Fox. “Julia doesn’t hide the fact that she loves all of this. The whole thing is like performance art.”
The pair have been inseparable since they met, with their dates been documented not only by the paparazzi but also West’s personal photographer. The 44-year-old rapper has even dressed Fox up like his own Barbie, much like he did with estranged wife Kim Kardashian, whom she once said made her cry when he threw out nearly all of her clothes.
“Kanye’s doing with Julia what he did to Kim,” said a Kardashian source. “He’s controlling what she wore — making sure she appears as the set image that he has in his mind.”
Up until her star turn in “Uncut Gems,” in which she plays Adam Sandler’s young and ambitious lover, Fox was best known for her antics on the NYC social scene.
“I photographed Julia all the time, she was my muse. She was into drugs, she was crazy, but everyone liked her,” a source told The Post. “She hung around the Lower East Side. Her culture was the bars, the graffiti scene, the nightlife. She was making clothing with her friends and modeling for artists.”
The source added that Fox was into wealthy, older men who could take care of her.
“She had a sugar daddy who got her a place in Soho,” the source said. “It was this older guy. She had this place with an elevator that opened right up into the apartment, and she was driving a Mercedes. She didn’t have a job, so we knew this guy was paying.”
In an extremely unfiltered chat back in February 2018, Fox told the “Acme” podcast that, indeed, lines were blurred with one of her exes.
“I had this ‘daddy’ phase … I had an older boyfriend for six years, and yeah, he was rich. But like, it wasn’t a sugar daddy,” she said. “A sugar daddy is like, ‘we f–k, you leave me money’ … I’ve never done anything like that.”
“All of a sudden I have Mercedes Benz and Chanel coming out of my a– and [people thought] either, oh, I have a sugar daddy, or I’m a prostitute. No one ever considers the fact that no, maybe we were in love … I have his name tattooed on my finger.”
The curvaceous brunette was born in Milan and moved to NYC when she was 6, with her contractor dad, Thomas, and younger brother Chris. Her mother, Graziella Mercanti, stayed behind in Italy with another younger brother, family sources confirmed to The Post.
They moved to Yorkville but, she told High Snobiety in December 2019, “It was kind of unstable. We were homeless at one point.”
Later, Fox bounced from school to school, including City-As-School in the West Village.
She told Rolling Stone how she was arrested as a teen for shoplifting clothes from Bloomingdales, and has been open about her struggles with heroin and pills, suffering a near-fatal drug overdose at 17. Fox has said she is now sober after joining Narcotics Anonymous and has met a few boyfriends through the program.
She also worked as a dominatrix. “You have to really have a good sense of humor [about it]. You see the craziest s–t ,” she told the Acme podcast, adding that she had peed on a guy “and made [him] drink it,” but said she had never touched any of her clients, or slept with them, as “that’s illegal.”
Fox has long been a Page Six fixture. In 2015, she featured within the column’s pages after her ex Teddy Perweiler, the owner of former Chinatown hotspot Happy Ending, was arrested for allegedly attacking her. The case was later dismissed and Perweiler was ordered to pay $600 to Fox, who was an investor in the club.
The actress has said that her “Uncut Gems” was a case of art mirroring life: “I was a bit of a wild child, and dating an older, married man, [so] I do feel like I am playing a 2012 version of myself,” she told V magazine.
Fox also recalled how filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie, would mine her life for anecdotes. “Josh [Safdie] would ask me, ‘What would you do if you were in a fight with your boyfriend, and you needed to manipulate him?’” Fox recalled.
It seemed that she had settled down when she and Peter Artemiev, who runs streetwear brand New York Robbery had son Valentino in January 2020. The couple, who are not believed to have married, reportedly split last year.
Over Christmas, Fox raged at Artemiev in a two-day rant on her Instagram Stories, accusing him of being an absent “dead beat alcoholic drug addict dad” who could be found at a strip joints.
“This man left me with a 5-month-old and a dog and a home and ALL THE BILLS. It’s wrong!!! It’s not fair,” she seethed.
Artemiev responded: “I was saddened to learn of the utterly false statements made on social media by Julia Fox, my co-parent, who is clearly struggling. Out of respect for her privacy and to protect our child, I will not comment further.” He was unavailable to comment for this story.
Fox met Kanye over New Year and the rapper wined and dined her at Carbone, dressing her in the latest looks from Diesel. Last week she recounted their first dates — saying they had an “instant connection” — for Interview magazine, which featured PDA-heavy photos of the lovebirds.
“It was only a matter of time before Julia and Kanye met. She runs in fashion and music circles,” said the socialite who knows her.
One of Fox’s best friends is Cole Huvane, who works on rapper Travis Scott’s team. Scott had one child, and is expecting another, with Kylie Jenner. Friends say Fox has also worked with Lorraine Schwartz, who is West’s estranged wife Kim Kardashian’s jeweler of choice.
Fox has also made it no secret that she’s obsessed with Kardashian.
During a December episode of her Spotify podcast Forbidden Fruits with co-host Niki Takesh, Fox looked back on the pop culture events of 2021, at one point discussing West’s divorce with Kardashian and the latter’s subsequent moving on with Pete Davidson. (Coincidentally, Fox and Davidson happened to star on Paper magazine’s November 2019 cover together.)
Fox admitted that she has long been a “die-hard” fan of Keeping Up with the Kardashians: “I, like, wanted them to be my family.”
The Kardashian source told The Post: “Kim is happy for Kanye … they have a really good co-parenting thing going on right now, and he seems to be having relatively stable mental health at the moment.”
But perhaps West should watch out. As Fox warned on the “Acme” podcast: “I was thinking if I had a boyfriend and he posted a selfie and then it got thousands of likes I would be going through each and every single one of those likes.
“I would rather my boyfriend not have an Instagram or any friends at all, for that matter. Like, I should be his only friend.”
