Blake Lively sent doll pictures to Leonardo DiCaprio

Blake Lively used to send photos of a doll to Leonardo DiCaprio when they dated in 2011, 'Gossip Girl' executive producer Joshua Safran has revealed.

The 'Gossip Girl' star dated the Hollywood hunk for a few months in 2011 and the show's executive producer Joshua Safran has revealed Blake had a bizarre way of communicating with her then-boyfriend.

Speaking to Vanity Fair magazine, Joshua said: "When I think about shooting the L.A. episodes, Blake was dating [DiCaprio] at the time, and she had this thing where she had a doll that she took photos of that she sent to Leo. Blake was way ahead of the curve. It was pre-Instagram. She was documenting her life in photographs in a way that people were not yet doing."

Following her split from Leonardo, Blake went on to date her now-husband Ryan Reynolds - with whom she shares daughters James, two, and Ines, 11 months - and previously revealed her family gives her "security and happiness".

She said: "We've both given up projects that we really love because we can't keep our family together. People often think their career is something they have to chase and maintain, but for us, we said, 'Let's always chase and maintain our personal life.' This is a career that's like the stock market: You've got to stay hot while you're hot. But your family, that's the real thing that gives you security and success and happiness."

And Blake is keen to raise her kids in the same "normal" way her husband was brought up.

She said: "Ryan had a nice, normal upbringing, and we want our kids to have the same normal life that we had. We don't ever want to rob them of what we had, because we'd feel really selfish. I'd rather not have to deal with it at all, but we knew the lifestyle we were getting into, and while it's hard ... it's another thing when it's our child. She didn't have the opportunity to make a decision about what she wants."

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