Gwyneth Paltrow covers the April issue of Vanity Fair, mostly to promote her big return to acting in Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme, opposite Timothee Chalamet. The film doesn’t have a release date, but Gwyneth is still talking… and talking. This VF piece made me incredibly nostalgic for these kinds of love-them-or-hate-them movie star tell-all interviews which are all too rare these days. Gwyneth talks extensively about being an empty-nester, about conscious uncoupling, about her move to Montecito and about the business of Goop. She even talks about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex too. You can read the full VF piece here. Some highlights:
Her life has changed so much since she had a major film role: “I’ve gone through a lot since the last time I was onscreen in a real way. I’m going through hard-core perimenopause, which doesn’t help. There’s this weird, deep grief that comes with letting go, saying goodbye, and then calling into question your own purpose” is how Paltrow puts it. She’s talking about empty nesting, but the same could apply to her state of personal and professional flux. “Who am I now?”
Filming sex scenes with Chalamet: “There’s now something called an intimacy coordinator, which I did not know existed,” she says. When Marty Supreme’s intimacy coordinator asked Paltrow if she’d be okay with a particular move, “I was like, ‘Girl, I’m from the era where you get naked, you get in bed, the camera’s on.’” Incidentally, Gwynothée all but waved off their intimacy coordinator, a choice actors are free to make. “We said, ‘I think we’re good. You can step a little bit back.’ I don’t know how it is for kids who are starting out, but…if someone is like, ‘Okay, and then he’s going to put his hand here’ - I would feel, as an artist, very stifled by that.”
Did #MeToo change anything? “I think so.” For one, “there are no meetings set up in hotel rooms, from what I understand, or if there are, it’s multiple people in the room. That bubble has definitely burst. I’m sure people still abuse power in Hollywood because they do everywhere, but it has definitely changed.”
Depleted in the ‘90s and early ‘00s: “I was really disenchanted with how I was treated for a lot of it,” including “the disparity between male costars and all that, which now sounds cliché, but it’s really true and it’s hard to live.”
Winning an Oscar so young: “I had the validation so early that it was almost not a good thing… It’s just not as glamorous as it looks. There’s a healthy level of ambition, like, ‘I know who I am’ and ‘I want the world,’ and then there’s another aspect that comes from damage…. ‘I want that so that a hole will be filled, so that other people will find me worthy, so that I’ll be lovable.’ ” Looking back, she says, “I think I was very much dancing between those things.”
The GOOP brand: “It used to be, ‘We can take shots at these models or movie stars ’cause it’s fun to read,’ ” Paltrow says, including fellow famous founders Hailey Bieber, Blake Lively, and her friend Reese Witherspoon, but it’s more precarious when they’re answering to investors. “You’re crossing a line because you could be impacting my P&L”—corporate-speak for profit and loss. “If it’s not true and you’re creating a negative perception about any one of our businesses, what’s your responsibility there? It’s different than just saying, ‘Look at this gross picture of Gwyneth on a beach on vacation.’”
The lifestyle pioneer: “I feel like more than being a successful actress or being a part of #MeToo, or being one of the first actresses to launch a lifestyle brand and I haven’t fully fleshed this out yet, so I’m sort of saying this to you as I’m thinking it for the first time, but it might just be that my role is to pave the way. By some instinct or curiosity or desire, I go somewhere and I hack through the path and I get the scratches of hacking through, but I make space for other people, then, to do it.” She’s just putting it out there: What if the sh-t she’s pilloried for—but that is gradually, eventually, adopted more widely—“that’s the point of my life, maybe?”
On the Sussexes: “I don’t know Meghan and Harry,” Paltrow says. I’m surprised, given how close they live. “I mean, I’ve met Meghan, who seems really lovely, but I don’t know her at all. Maybe I’ll try to get through their security detail and bring them a pie.” She hasn’t seen the trailer for Markle’s Netflix series, With Love, Meghan, either. Based on its fresh-veggie-filled emphasis on the good life, the show seems quite Goop-adjacent, but Paltrow is unthreatened. If anything, she’s inclined to defend the duchess: When “there’s noise about certain women in the culture, I do have, always, a strong instinct to stand up for them.”
There’s space for everyone: She says she welcomes Markle—and any number of Goop’s descendants—to the proverbial lifestyle space. “I was raised to see other women as friends, not foes,” Paltrow says firmly. “I think there’s always more than enough to go around. Everybody deserves an attempt at everything that they want to try.” It’s a lesson Paltrow learned early, around age 19, from Danner. She’d lost out on a much-coveted role and was griping about the actor cast instead. She says her mother cut her off, telling young Paltrow: “Another woman is never your competition” and “what is right for you will find you.”
There’s a ton more, including a large section about raw milk and Robert Kennedy Jr’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda and Gwyneth’s somewhat murky politics these days, but she sounded like an a–hole there and I didn’t think many people would care (who gives a sh-t about raw milk when Kennedy is bringing back measles and flu deaths?) I appreciate what she says about the Duchess of Sussex and that she made the effort to show some public support for Meghan. I also sort of hope that Gwyneth and Meghan do become friends or perhaps allies. I mock Gwyneth a lot, but she’s a good ally to have.
Cover courtesy of VF, additional photos courtesy of Cover Images.
