Exclusive

Source: Steven Soderbergh Came Clean to Wife About Fathering a Child While Separated

Jules Asner knows all about paternity issues, which Soderbergh has been trying to settle for months, source close to the couple tell E! News

By Natalie Finn, Ted Casablanca Feb 04, 2011 5:00 AMTags
Jules Asner, Steven Soderbergh Charles Eshelman/Getty Images

Steven Soderbergh is in the middle of a very bad girlfriend experience.

The Oscar-winning filmmaker was slapped with a paternity suit today in New York, filed by an Australian woman who claims they had an affair in December 2009 and he's the father of her now 5-month-old daughter.

Well, she's apparently right. He admits to being the father and his smokin' wife, model and former E! host Jules Asner, already knows all about it.

A source close to the couple confirms to E! News that Soderbergh and Asner were separated while he lived in Australia to direct a play he wrote, Tot Mom, which opened at the Sydney Theatre Company in December 2009.

The very month, "including but not limited to," that Frances Lawrencina Anderson claims that she and the Traffic director had "sexual intercourse on many occasions covering all possible dates of [conception]...and as a result thereof, she became pregnant," according to the suit filed Thursday in Manhattan Supreme Court.

He "has acknowledged that he is the father of the child verbally and by offering to pay various medical and other expenses incurred by [Anderson] in relation to the pregnancy," the suit, obtained by the New York Daily News, continues.

True that. Our source says that Soderbergh came clean to his wife immediately upon hearing he had fathered a child and that he has been trying to work things out with Anderson for months.

"Steven really felt like he was trying to do the right thing and being very generous," the source says. "They've been trying to settle this for almost a year."

Soderbergh's camp is convinced that Anderson went after the director where he lives because Australian law would only obligate him to financially provide for daughter Pearl Button Anderson, who was born Aug. 30, 2010. Stating that Anderson is not able to sufficiently support her daughter, the suit demands that Soderbergh pay for the mother's health insurance, in addition to child support.

Soderbergh has been married to Asner, his second wife, since 2003.

(Originally published Feb. 2, 2011, at 5:30 p.m. PT)