Actress Ends Engagement: 'Best Decision I've Ever Made'
Chris Zylka popped the question to Hailee Lautenbach in December 2022.
Hailee Lautenbach and Chris Zylka have decided to end their engagement. The 29-year-old Model House actress and 38-year-old Leftovers actor split at the beginning of the year but just made their breakup public, with Lautenbach telling TMZ on March 17 that her choice not to marry Paris Hilton's ex-fiancée was the "best decision" she's ever made.
Lautenbach and Zylka ended things back in January, TMZ reports, just shortly after the couple made the move south to Los Angeles from Portland, Oregon. The couple's breakup came just over a year after Zylka proposed to Lautenbach spontaneously ahead of the Seattle Marathon in December 2022. "Ending the engagement was the best decision I've ever made in my life," Lautenbach told TMZ.
At the time of their engagement, Lautenbach had much different feelings for Zylka. "Gosh darn it who let me fall in love and GET MARRIED?! I was supposed to be a cool heartbreaker FOREVER!" she wrote on social media at the time. "[Chris Zylka] I love him so much it's a whole new feeling unlocked. I hope you all find it. Hailee Zylka...how do we like it? Hawaii or Disneyland here we come."
People have been quick to notice that Lautenbach's statement about the end of her engagement was incredibly similar to that Hilton shared with Cosmopolitan U.K. after calling off her own engagement to Zylka. "It was the best decision I've ever made in my life," she told the outlet for its April 2020 issue. "I just don't think [he] was the right person and I feel like I'm an incredible woman and I deserve someone so amazing. It just didn't feel right. I've worked way too hard to just give my life to someone. They have to be perfect."
The Shark Night actor previously popped the question to Hilton during a trip to Colorado in January 2018, nearly a year after the two had made their romance public. In November of that same year, Hilton called off the engagement, addressing her split on The Talk later that month. "I'm just really having my 'me time,'" the heiress said at the time. "I just feel that when I fall in love, I fall in love fast and hard and it was this whirlwind romance. ... I thought it was going to be my happy ending and I just realized after time that it wasn't the right decision." Hilton would go on to marry Carter Reum in November 2021, and the two share children Phoenix and London.