AnnaLynne McCord Reveals She’s Dating Rugby Player Danny Cipriani: ‘It Kind of Found Me’

AnnaLynne McCord is head over heels for rugby player Danny Cipriani.

“I wasn't looking for it at all. It kind of found me,” McCord, 36, exclusively told Us Weekly about her new romance while attending the One Humanity Foundation global launch on Tuesday, May 7, at a private estate in Los Angeles hosted by Howie Mandel, Jaime King and Mario Lopez to support Mental Health Awareness Month.

She continued: “It's the most unlikely situation ever because I was with this person on and off for four years, and we were two shadows matching the shadow of the other person.”

McCord then revealed that she is currently dating Cipriani, 36, who is a retired English professional rugby union player. The actress shared that she and Cipriani dated in the past after meeting on dating app Raya and had an “explosive and passionate” romance, but distance kept them apart until now.

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“He lived there and I lived here, and it was just never going to go anywhere,” she explained. “We were reconnecting as friends and both [went] on our own spiritual journeys. [We] both found that we were finding self-love for the first time.”

While the couple first connected eight years ago, neither of them was in the right headspace to pursue a relationship. However, after taking the time to work on themselves, McCord shared that they decided to “reconnect as friends.” Their initially platonic relationship ended up turning romantic.

“Now we're together and it's new, but we are both showing up for ourselves in life,” she said. “And because we can show up for ourselves, we're matching each other on every level and we're having painful conversations of where we were, because they're honest and they're real and I wouldn't want anything else.”

McCord confessed that she and Cipriani are “fully each other’s partners” and teased that the athlete told her she’s “not allowed to talk to anybody else.”

“He's my spiritual partner. That's the title that I would give to him,” she said. “We're showing up to challenge each other's souls.”

Before Cipriani, McCord was romantically linked to Kellan Lutz and Dominic Purcell. She dated Lutz from 2008 to 2011. Following her split from the Twilight actor, she moved on with Purcell, whom she dated until 2018.

McCord shared with Us that she’s “grateful” for her exes and is happy for both of them and their new relationships.

“Dom, I will always love for all eternity,” she told Us. “But I have a special love and a special place in my heart for all of the partners I've been with through the years.”

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Lutz, 39, tied the knot with wife Brittany Gonzalez in 2017, while Purcell, 54, married Tish Cyrus in July 2023.

“I'm so happy for [Dom.] I'm so happy for him and Tish and I am just happy that he is doing what makes him happy,” she said on Tuesday. “But he taught me so much. [And] Kellan Lutz! Going way back! I learned so much.”

McCord joked that her former flames were like “teachers” to her, teasing that she “wasn't always a very good student.” Now that she’s moving forward with Cipriani, she vowed that she’s giving that relationship her all.

“I'm showing up for this [relationship with Danny], and he's so grateful for his past and what he's learned and we're trying to now learn from each other,” she told Us. “I'm so grateful.”

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In fact, the couple are so in tune with each other that they want to share it with the world.

“Danny and I are pitching a [TV] show that has to do with sacred union,” McCord revealed. “It’s in development. It's very early stages."

“The passion was there and that was clear,” she added of her relationship with Danny when they first met. “And the electricity, we were like, this feels so electric. What's going on? So cut to eight years later, we're just going to be friends. And everyone was like, no, this energy between you is ridiculous. It’s about intimacy, it's about connections, it's about all the things that we were afraid of before.”

With reporting by Andrea Simpson