Chris Evans' brother Scott has defended the Hollywood star's romance with Alba Baptista.

Both Chris, 42 and Alba, 26, have faced vitriol from his fans since going public with their two-year romance in January and Scott, 39, claimed Chris has found it hard to date due to the hassle he and his love interests get from fans.

Speaking on Nick Viall's podcast 'The Viall Files', Scott said: "It's tough, people can ruin things pretty quickly. The way people can be, it can make it pretty hard to date someone like that because you think like, 'oh I'm just dating a person, he's a guy', and then all of a sudden it's article after article after post after post... [and] everybody is just being like you are a piece of c*** to anybody he’s tried to date and just destroying them. You can only take that for so long and it makes relationships kind of hard for him.

"It’s been a slow burn over the years [for Chris’ career], it’s not like he catapulted into fame. We watched the internet happen. Twitter wasn’t around when he first started making movies so being able to just see it all … and what can happen … it can be a dark place and people can get very bold.”

However, Scott insisted that Chris and Alba are "pretty serious" and he approves of the relationship.

A source also previously told Us Weekly that Chris and Alba had “gotten serious” in a short amount of time.

The insider said: "They spend most of their time at his place in Massachusetts and love the quiet life there, surrounded by nature and away from the spotlight. Chris was very open that he wanted to take his time before settling down.”