The Best Movie Actor In Hollywood!

Chapter 800: Elizabeth Holmes

This particular charity event was a banquet held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In addition to the organizers sending out invitations to raise money for their cause, tickets were also sold to the public. Those who passed the organizer's background check could purchase a seat for about thirty thousand dollars, or an entire table for a quarter of a million.

As was his custom, Matthew attended such formal events alone, never with a female companion.

This was different from a movie premiere. To appear at a function like this with a woman on his arm was tantamount to announcing to the world that she was his girlfriend, fiancée, or wife.

And no such woman had appeared by Matthew's side.

Upon entering the temporarily converted banquet hall, Matthew was guided by the event staff to a table populated mostly by people from Hollywood. Leonardo DiCaprio was already seated there.

"Hey, Leo," Matthew greeted him with a nod.

Leonardo DiCaprio looked up and saw Matthew. He rose from his seat, spread his arms wide for a brief hug, and said with a grin, "Long time no see, Matthew."

No one else had arrived at their table yet, so Matthew and Leonardo DiCaprio took adjacent seats and chatted while surveying the guests milling about the hall.

The room was less than a third full, but it was already brimming with celebrities. There were also quite a few titans of the business world whom Matthew recognized: the founder of Facebook; the CEO of Netflix, with whom he'd had dealings; the future head of Twitter; a certain real estate tycoon's famously beautiful daughter; and even Rupert Murdoch, the heart and soul of the Murdoch Group.

He even spotted Amanda in the crowd.Amanda saw him too, and their eyes met for a fleeting moment.

Then Matthew noticed something even more peculiar: a throng of prominent figures from the business and investment world, including Rupert Murdoch, had gathered around a young woman, treating her as the undeniable center of attention.

The woman was very young, perhaps twenty-four or twenty-five, with vibrant, long blonde hair. Seated amidst the circle of powerful men, she had a willowy, striking figure. While she couldn't quite compare to Amanda, she wasn't far behind.

It was truly a rare sight for a woman so young to command the focus of so many business magnates.

It had to be said that the corporate world had very few beautiful female executives or entrepreneurs.

Beautiful women who also possessed talent often found that there were easier paths to earning a substantial income, so naturally, fewer chose to walk the more arduous road.

Leonardo DiCaprio seemed to notice where Matthew's attention had drifted. "She's a newcomer to the American business scene," he explained. "The new darling of Wall Street."

"Who is she?" Matthew didn't bother to hide his curiosity.

"Elizabeth Holmes," Leonardo DiCaprio replied. Seeing Matthew's continued puzzlement, he added with a smile, "To be more precise, she's being called the next Steve Jobs."

Matthew shifted his gaze back to Leonardo DiCaprio.

Leonardo DiCaprio's smirk faded as he continued, "Around 2003, when Elizabeth Holmes was just a sophomore at Stanford, she dropped out. She used the money she'd saved for tuition to start a blood-testing company called Theranos."

He took a sip from the water glass in front of him before going on. "Elizabeth Holmes has developed a new technology that supposedly requires only a single drop of blood from a pinprick to run hundreds of different tests, all for a low fee. Compared to the traditional method of drawing a vial of blood and spending a fortune on a single test, her innovative approach is obviously far more commercially viable. They say this new blood analysis yields faster, more accurate results. It's a huge deal. I hear Theranos is raising venture capital, and a lot of people are eager to invest."

Matthew was a little surprised himself. "That sounds revolutionary."

Leonardo DiCaprio nodded emphatically. "If I didn't have so much of my cash tied up, I'd want to invest in her company too."

Matthew rested his chin on his hand and frowned, shaking his head slightly to himself. He had always been extremely cautious about venturing into fields he knew nothing about.

They talked a bit more about Elizabeth Holmes before the conversation drifted back to their shared interests.

"I heard you had a private party in Rio de Janeiro with a bunch of Victoria's Secret Angels," Leonardo DiCaprio said, his voice tinged with envy. "Is that true?"

Matthew didn't deny it. "Does news travel that fast?"

Taking that as a confirmation, Leonardo DiCaprio pointed a finger at Matthew and grumbled, "A few of those models were on my radar!"

"Nothing I could do about it," Matthew said, spreading his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "They invited me. I couldn't exactly refuse, could I?"

He asked rhetorically, "Leo, would you have said no?"

Leonardo DiCaprio shook his head. "Why don't I ever get an invitation like that?"

Matthew adopted a mock-serious tone. "It's probably because I'm more handsome and charismatic."

Leonardo DiCaprio glanced down at his own portly frame and sighed. "Forget it." Then, his curiosity got the better of him. "So, what was it like?"

"Exhausting," Matthew lowered his voice. "Utterly exhausting. It took me three days to recover. I'm never doing that again."

A hint of disdain crept into Leonardo DiCaprio's voice. "Don't exaggerate."

Matthew simply spread his hands, a look of pure innocence on his face. Leonardo DiCaprio had asked the question and started the topic; he was just telling the truth.

More and more guests filled the banquet hall, and a steady stream of people came over to greet Matthew. This included plenty of individuals from outside the entertainment industry, such as António Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and the chairwoman of the Foundation for Women & Children, among others.

It wasn't that Matthew was getting arrogant, but sitting in this banquet hall, he was undoubtedly one of the heavyweights. His influence had already extended far beyond the entertainment world, to a degree that even Leonardo DiCaprio, sitting beside him, couldn't match.

The people who gradually filled the remaining seats at their table were, without exception, Hollywood's elite: Jerry Bruckheimer, Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, and Sandra Bullock.

In this circle, while they might not see each other privately, in public, all the big stars behaved like the best of friends, full of mutual affection.

Matthew embraced Jerry Bruckheimer and spoke of how much he'd love to work with him again. Then he asked Julia Roberts how her niece, Emma Roberts, was doing, and chatted with Matt Damon about whether a new spy movie was in the works.

Finally, he congratulated Sandra Bullock on winning the Academy Award for Best Actress.

What Matthew hadn't expected was the subtle hint of interest in Sandra Bullock's words.

"I hear you invest in films," she said, her eyes fixed on Matthew's handsome, sunny face. She leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, "I have a very good project. Why don't you come to my room after the banquet so we can study it together?"

How could Matthew not understand the implication? He glanced at Sandra Bullock. She had to be nearly fifty, right?

"I don't have time tonight," Matthew replied, showing no interest in the Oscar-winning actress. He politely declined, "I already have a meeting scheduled to talk about work."

Sandra Bullock, known throughout Hollywood for her fondness for romance, didn't give up. "Another time, then. I'll be in New York for about a week."

Matthew looked at Sandra Bullock's face, her expression nearly frozen in place, and said, "I don't really have the appetite to invest in new projects at the moment."

It was a very clear rejection, delivered in a way that didn't cause her to lose face.

Sandra Bullock smiled. "All right."

Although the refusal inevitably stung a little, Matthew's manner of speaking and acting made it impossible to hold a grudge.

If anything, it only made him seem more appealing to her.

Matthew just gave Sandra Bullock a slight nod and seized the opportunity to turn back to Leonardo DiCaprio, steering the conversation in another direction.

Of course, Matthew had no intention of accepting an invitation from a woman who looked like a "frozen-faced goddess." An age gap of five, six, or even eight years was acceptable to him, but ten or twenty years was a difficult psychological barrier to cross. His tastes just weren't that extreme.

The banquet soon officially began. There wasn't much to say about such events; they all followed a standard procedure, focusing on two main points: charitable donations and providing a high-end networking venue.

Every celebrity and tycoon in attendance, if they had any sense of decorum, would donate a sum of money commensurate with their status.

Even Julia Roberts, who was famously tightfisted in Hollywood, donated two hundred thousand dollars.

As one of Hollywood's top superstars, Matthew had come prepared. He pledged half a million dollars outright and, during the auction portion of the evening, spent another three hundred thousand to acquire the original script of Pirates of the Caribbean, which had been donated by Jerry Bruckheimer.

After the charity segment concluded, the banquet hall transformed into a social mixer. Many people began to move around the room, and even Matthew left his seat to seek out individuals he was interested in getting to know better.