Gwyneth Paltrow - interview with actress - Interview

People have been talking about this actress since her staggering performance as the cocky con artist in Flesh and Bone. Now, she's about to justify the chatter with a slew of movies that showcase her quirkily brilliant talent. Here, Paltrow describes her tornadolike life and times to friend and colleague

Gwyneth Paltrow's arrival as a smirking grifter In Flesh and Bone stole that 1993 rural noir from her co-stars, James Caan, Meg Ryan, and Dennis Quaid. It was a performance of such casual grace and dirty promise, of such insolence, that it made you wonder where Paltrow came from and what damage she might do next. The daughter of actress Blythe Danner and writer-producer Bruce Paltrow, she turned up again as a strung out coed In Malice and was then ripe and languid as the Algonquin Round Table groupie who beds Charles MacArthur, causing Dorothy Parker to slit her wrists, in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle.

Is Paltrow in a rush? She hasn't stopped working, as if she knows that, a decade from now, the bloom may be off the rose. She was Thomas Jefferson's pinched, fussy daughter, resentful of his liaison with their black maid, In Jefferson in Paris, which came out earlier this year. This month she appears as another student, truculent and convincingly virginal, in Moonlight and Valentino, and as the wife of a New York cop - played by her boyfriend, Brad Pitt - in Seven. She's completed two more pictures, Sydney and The Pallbearers, and has the prestigious lead of the self-deluding heroine in an upcoming film of Jane Austen's Emma. I can't wait to see her being soigne and English.

It seems she can he anything - from pretty to plain, from amoral to puritanical - except vapid, In an era of vapid starlets. "Gwyneth is like a cross between a swan and a golden Lab - Grace Kelly one minute and Giulietta Masina the next," says Jennifer Beals, a Mend of Paltrow's since they worked together in Mrs. Parker. Beals caught up with her recently in New York and taped the following conversation.

JENNIFER BEALS: Gwyneth, after finishing Jefferson in Paris, you went straight into a production of The Sea Gull In Williamstown [Massachusetts], acting with your mom. What's it like working with her?

GWYNETH PALTROW: In a way, it's the most wonderful thing that I could ever think of. Because it's my mommy, you know, and she's also this wonderful actress, and I learn so much from her. But sometimes it's tense.

JB: Do you feel judged at all?

GP: Judged by her, or judged by people for being her daughter?

JB: Either.

GP: Well, she gets so panicked about me doing well that I don't feel judged by her, unless I'm doing something she thinks I could do better. I don't feel judged by other people for being her daughter, although I definitely used to.

JB: What do you feel you learned from her while you were doing The Sea Gull together?

GP: It's the fourth time I've worked with her, and this one was sort of rough because she had played Nina in The Sea Gull at Williamstown twenty years before, and now I was playing that role. I think Nina and Blanche DuBois [in A Streetcar Named Desire] are the two most personal roles for my mom.

JB: Was she proprietary about the role of Nina?

GP: A little, but in a very sweet way. I was a bit nervous about doing it, but she really helped me. When I was bad, she told me I was bad. And when I was good, she told me I was good. If she wasn't my mother, I would still respect her so much as an actress.

JB: I saw her as Blanche. She was wonderful.

GP: I know. She's amazing.

JB: I haven't seen you for a long time. You've Just been working nonstop.

GP: I know. I finished Jefferson in Paris, came home, had one weekend off, did The Sea Gull for five weeks. That ended on a Sunday. The next day I went to Toronto to do Moonlight and Valentino. It was written by Ellen Simon. She was married to an astrophysicist who went jogging one morning and got hit by a car and was killed. She wrote this piece as a kind of cathartic experience. Elizabeth Perkins plays the woman who's widowed, and I play her sister, who's very like me. She's more neurotic than I am, if that's possible. [laughs]

JB: That's very strange, because I've never thought of you as neurotic.

GP: You haven't?

JB: No. But I do see a childlike quality In you. You're so sensitive, and you follow your emotions wherever they lead you. One of the things I love about you so much, and I'm really jealous of it, is that you have an audacity, in the best sense of that word. You're very bold and unapologetic about who you are and what you feel. Are you aware of that or not?

GP: Sometimes. At other moments I just feel retarded and incapable. Someone once asked me if I felt I was predictable in terms of the answers that I give to questions, or in how I react in certain situations. I think I'm predictable in that everyone knows I'll react at one extreme or another. But no one could ever say about me, "Oh, she'll say that."

JB: That's why everybody working on Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle was so excited to see your dailies. It was "Oh, Gwyn's dailies are up tonight. Let's go and see what happened," because you were improvising so much - everyone was. Are you aware of having any kind of process?

GP: Not at all. I'd feel much more secure if I could say, "This is how I do it." You read that Anthony Hopkins wakes up in the morning and reads a script one hundred and thirty times. So far, I've approached each thing so differently.

JB: Has any one experience been more rewarding than another?.

GP: Oh God, I really haven't thought about it in those terms. I've just learned different things from each movie that I've done. That's what I've walked away with each time, as opposed to feeling, That was artistically satisfying - although there are definitely days when I feel that. Sometimes you feel the rhythm is perfect and that you could act all day. But then there's the nightmare of waiting between takes. I have such a battle with the fact that I never feel I'm controlling my own destiny when I'm working. I feel trapped when someone is telling me when to get up and what to put on and which city I'll be in from week to week. I didn't used to think about it. Now, it's starting to drive me crazy.

JB: Do you think that's because you've lest your privacy to some degree?

GP: I know this sounds ridiculous, but I feel more whole as a person these days. I'm beginning to understand more who I am and what I want and what my goals are. Consequently, I resent being channeled into something or pushed around. Once I'm doing the work, then it all congeals, but I hate being told, "It's going to be two hours before we need you, because we have to light the scene." Lately I've felt like saying, "O.K., what if I'm not ready in two hours?" It's very bad.

JB: You mentioned your goals. What are they?

GP: To have babies.

JB: To have babies?

GP: Yeah, and to learn a lot, and to be really good at my job. And to never have it be a chore, which I think happens to people. It's a shame, because I think what we do is pretty extraordinary.

JB: One of the extraordinary parts is the publicity you have to do, and all of the upkeep that enables you to carry on doing what you love doing - the acting.

GP: Year, I know. It's terrible.

JB: But in a way it's part of the work.

GP: I guess I feel it's terrible now, because no one's ever picked on me for my work. And now they're picking on me because I go out with a big cheesy movie star!

JB: So now that you're acquainted with fame and the media, has that changed your idea of yourself or informed your choices at all?

GP: I don't spread myself out as much as I used to. This past year is probably a bad example because I've been working so much, I haven't had time to step back and get perspective. It's been this nonstop tornado, culminating in this weird press thing. It's made me recede, because there are few people I feel I can hang out with.

JB: When you choose the film you're going to do next, do you think about your career or just about the role?

GP: I don't really understand that concept of having a career, or what agents mean when they say they're building one for you. I just do things I think will be interesting and that have integrity. I hate those tacky, pointless, big, fluffy, unimportant movies.

JB: Are you aware of your talent?

GP: No. Sometimes, but rarely. Are you?

JB: There are times when things work and that feels wonderful, and there are times when they don't and I get very frustrated. I tend to remember the bad times more than the good times.

GP: I think it's a gift to be aware of your talent sometimes, but where's that going to get you?

JB: Well, you can delight in it and not be arrogant about It.

GP: I don't know - I think if you're insecure about it, you can really open more doors.

JB: Because you work harder?

GP: Yeah. If you know you're good, I think you can limit yourself, because you put walls up ahead of you. Whereas, if you're scared, you can do anything. You don't know what you're capable of.

JB: So it's a constant discovery?

GP: Exactly.

JB: Have you considered developing projects for yourself?

GP: I just feel I'm too young for that right now. It's so grown-up to start developing material, don't you think?

JB: No.

GP: [laughs] Yes, it is.

JB: I think it's about controlling your destiny and molding your life.

GP: I feel I need to do what's handed to me for a while, or seek out things that are already there. I have a lot to learn at this point. It would be scary to me to take responsibility for a movie getting made.

JB: But isn't it kind of exciting, too, if it's something you are really passionate about? You said you want to have babies, and that's not exactly devoid of responsibility.

GP: I know. But people aren't going to write in the papers, "Gwyneth had a baby, and it's ugly and stupid."

JB: [laughs] Nowadays, though, you never know.

GP: I know. The press is ruthless.

JB: How do you feel when people say that having your privacy invaded, or being misquoted by the press, is the price you pay for fame?

GP: I resent it right now, because most of it is happening because of who I go out with. I hope that my work will speak for itself and that people won't judge me based on things that go on in my personal life, whether it's to do with my parents or friends or whoever. Obviously you want people to like you and say nice things about you.

JB: How do you imagine your life will be in ten years' time?

GP: Ten years - I'll be roughly your age?

JB: "Your age." [GP laughs] You had to get that in, didn't you, girlie?

GP: Hopefully I'll be married, with three or four children. Just at peace, you know. I am so up and down at the moment. In the past couple of months I've had this real resurgence of adolescence, that spiky behavior. Do you remember when you were sixteen and you would be a bitch to your more, and you'd be in a great mood followed by a horrible mood? That's me now. Since I started working on this movie [The Pallbearers], I've been sixteen again.

JB: Rebelling against authority?

GP: I don't know what it is. I'd reached a good place and then it all started going haywire again. I guess that's what life's all about, really - reaching different plateaus, understanding why you're there, and then having it all fall apart. You have to reconstruct the way you perceive things, and then you grow up a bit. Right now, I'm in one of the chaos-between-plateaus periods. [laughs]

JB: Do you ever work through this chaos when you're acting, or channel it into your roles?

GP: No. It affects my personality, never my work. Sometimes it's really hard not to let it, because events in your life get inside your head. But I hate that, and it's lazy to let it get to you. I never want to compromise what I do. I get very focused about work, which is something that makes me feel good, because I always thought of myself as lazy and irresponsible. It's nice not to feel like a sloth.

JB: When you interviewed Jon Bon Jovi for Interview recently, you asked him about the last time he was really happy. When was the last time you were really happy?

GP: [pause] I was with Brad at a little coffee shop. We woke up late, and we were having a lazy morning, and we went around the corner and got these big bowls of latte and sat there all sleepy. I was so content, just loving where I was in time and space right then. Just a quiet little coffee and cigarette with the man I love.

JB: It sounds like one of those moments when it becomes clear that life is good.

GP: I know. It's hard to remember that every day.

JB: Well, you keep your eye on the prize.

GP: Aye, aye. [laughs]

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