Taylor Swift is a bit of a unicorn.
She has managed to become the biggest popstar in the world, embark on sold-out world tours, and have a prolific back catalogue of albums, and shows no signs of slowing down, with another album — The Tortured Poets Department — set for release next month.
And after all of that, she still seems to be... a genuinely lovely human?
But there's another Swift sibling that we don't hear about nearly as often: Taylor's little brother Austin Swift, who's also carving out a name for himself in the entertainment world. Sure, he tends to keep things more on the private side than his chart-dominating sister. But it turns out the actor is one of his big sister's strongest supporters.
So, who is Taylor Swift's brother?
On March 11, 1992 the Swift family welcomed a new member when Austin Kingsley Swift was born. Austin arrived three years after his older sister Taylor was born in 1989.
The siblings grew up in Wyomissing, Pennsylvannia, on a Christmas Tree farm before the family up and made way for Tennessee to help Taylor follow her dreams of becoming a country music singer.
Taylor and Austin have always been close, it seems — we first got a glimpse at their childhood when Taylor released home footage in the video clip for her song 'Christmas Tree Farm'.
And mini Taylor and Austin together is bloody adorable.
It's clear that these siblings have had an incredibly close bond since childhood and it looks like that connection has remained as they entered into adulthood.
While we are all, of course, very aware of what Taylor does for a living — you know, running the world and all that —it turns out her younger brother is also in the entertainment industry. From a young age he always had an affinity for the magic of cinema and credits going to see characters brought to life on the big screen as helping him through some hard times during adolescence.
"I didn’t have a lot of friends. I would go to the movies, and Daniel Craig was my friend, and Christian Bale was my friend, and Clive Owen was my friend, and Viggo Mortensen was my friend," he told Vanity Fair.
But despite his love for all things acting, it took Austin a while to realise that was something he was interested in pursuing professionally.
"[Taylor] found singing, and I knew from very early on that that was her direction," he shared in the Vanity Fair interview. "She was never going to quit; that was her thing, that was her life… and I was always a little bit, you know, doing this, doing that."
In 2015, Austin graduated from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, where he received a bachelor's degree in film studies. Since then he has dabbled in a number of acting roles and has even added some producing credits to his CV.
He made his acting debut in the 2016 feature film I.T alongside Pierce Brosnan, and followed it up with a role in Live by Night with Ben Affleck and Zoe Saldana. Not bad credits for an up-and-comer in Hollywood, right?!
Austin plays a part in the Swift family business.
Even though Austin has carved out his own career, he still dabbles in the 'family business' — aka the Taylor Swift world domination project.
"My dad, my mom, and my brother come up with some of the best ideas in my career. I always joke that we’re a small family business," Taylor told TIME magazine in an interview.
While he might not be crunching numbers in the accounts department of Swift enterprises (that would be a lot of bean counting), he is helping out with his own creative talents. Austin was an integral part of Taylor's movie and co-produced the 'I Bet You Think About Me (Taylor's Version)' music video, along with 'Folklore: The Long Pond Sessions'.
And clearly, Austin enjoys his role as sibling to his talented sister. At any given moment, you'll find him talking about how impressed he is by Taylor.
"I have always had a best friend, a role model, and a caring, tireless, dedicated champion in my corner," he wrote on a sweet Instagram post celebrating Taylor's 29th birthday.
"You have pulled me out of fires and carried me up mountains. The gift of getting to witness you become the wonderful person you are today has been the greatest privilege and honour of my life."
Similarly, Taylor is not shy of letting the world know how proud she is of her little brother and his achievements.
"It’s National Siblings Day! My brother Austin Swift is one of my best pals, and I'm really proud of him because he's in a film that came out today called We Summon The Darkness (which he also co-produced)," she wrote in a social post.
And while Austin is always there to throw his support behind his sister, he does tend to keep a low profile.
He's often seen accompanying Taylor to awards shows, and has recently been a fixture at Kansas City Chiefs games — ever since Taylor started dating tight end Travis Kelce. In fact, on Christmas Day 2023 he was spotted with Taylor at a Kansas City Chiefs game in full incognito mode dressed as Santa Claus!
Speaking of Taylor's new boyfriend, it seems Austin and Kelce have formed a bond of their own. The NFL star opened up about a pretty special Xmas gift he got from Austin while speaking on his podcast New Heights.
"He actually made me feel like a child because his gift to me was straight out of the bag," said Kelce. "In the Santa sack. Whipped it out and handed me a VHS of my favorite football movie of all time: Little Giants."
Austin Swift's girlfriend.
Just like Taylor's found love, Austin, too, is in a relationship, with model Sydney Ness.
The pair have been dating since September 2022, and it looks like she has truly become a part of the family, with Ness often seen celebrating holidays with Taylor and the fam, and sitting in the box at those Kansas City Chiefs games.
At the end of the day, though, what we really want to know is: What is it like being the brother of one of the world's most hard-working, acclaimed musicians?
According to Austin, it's been an incredible learning journey.
"Something I learned myself, and learned through watching her, is respect," he told Vanity Fair.
"You just respect everyone's time, everyone that you're working with. They're all there, it's all their lives, and you need to put the work in to be worth that."
Feature Image: Getty.
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