Was there ever a more beloved daughter than Gwyneth, whose father Bruce
Paltrow took her to Paris aged ten, “because I want you to see it first with
a man who will love you for ever, no matter what”? Certainly, having adoring
parents with a life-long marriage, besides the wherewithal as industry
insiders – her father was a producer-director, her mother, Blythe Danner, is
an actress – to guide her career, makes her that rarest of actresses: one
not lacking self-esteem.
“I was raised in privilege, which was very fortunate as I was able to have a
great education,” she says. “But my parents were smart. My father made it
very clear that the day I left university [she dropped out of the University
of California in her first year studying art history] I was on my own. He
didn’t give me any money and I really struggled and I waitressed and bought
cigarettes out of tips and tried to get to auditions with no gas.
“But the worst thing you can do is give a child a trust fund. They know
they’ll get it when they’re 18 or 21. And it just kills passion.” I ask if
she can imagine sending a penniless Apple out to waitress when she leaves
college and Paltrow looks at me as if I’m insane. “But she’s only three!”
she cries.
When Bruce Paltrow died a few days after his daughter’s 30th birthday it ended
what she calls “the defining relationship of my life”. It was then, broken
with mourning, she met Martin, whose background echoes her own: solid,
middle-class parents, high if at times preachy values and disdain for the
Dionysian side of fame. In just over a year, they were married, with a
daughter: it gives her great solace that although her father never met
Apple, a quarter of her is him.
Does she worry that during this career break her place will quickly be filled
with younger stars? “I don’t care,” she says. “I’m lucky because somewhere
along the line my identity stopped being racked up with, ‘What’s my
position, what do people think?’ I realised, ‘Oh my God, I’m so lucky ever
to do this job and if it’s there for me when I come back, great. And if it’s
not, I’ve had an amazing life, one that barely anyone gets to have.’
“It helps spending time in London, because you’re not surrounded by showbiz
people. When you’re in LA, people make you feel you’re not where you once
were. And you leave and think, ‘What do I care, it is nothing to do with my
essence at all.’”
And so Paltrow, realising her luck, is getting on with being the grand empress
of yummy mummies. She loves nothing more than flicking through books of
fabric swatches and cooking. “I’m a real homebody and that is something I
have to work against, to engage more in my professional life.” Does she drop
Apple off at school? “Yes.” Does she bake for the school fair? “Yes, once.”
Does she hang out with other mothers? At this she gets snippy. “I have a lot
to do,” she says indignantly. “I have a son. I have to do my exercise and
e-mails and my books and scripts.”
She works out two hours a day with a sort of virtual trainer who watches her
performance online in whichever of her three homes – London, New York, Long
Island – she is living. After children, her figure has gone up from a UK 8
to a size 10. I ask if the descriptions of her strict diet are exaggerated,
and receive a short lecture on the principles of macrobiotics. She is
advised by what she calls her “nutrition people”. No processed foods or
refined sugar... eat locally and seasonally... whole grains and
vegetables... blah de blah. But, she says, she’s so relaxed now that if a
baguette and camembert are put before her, she might eat the lot. With a
glass of red wine. I don’t say that earlier, bored, I snooped downstairs to
the kitchen where it appeared – while we journos ate white bread – bowls of
noodles and vegetables, brown rice and walnuts were served up, presumably,
for Gwynnie.
But when I enquire if domestic arrangements are tricky when both her career
and Martin’s are governed by international industries, a curtain of distrust
descends. “There’s nothing fixed,” she says politely but finally. “He
doesn’t like me to talk about him. Forgive me if I can’t answer. He’s very
strict about it.” Paltrow has said the couple’s decision never to appear in
public was to downscale their profile, to assert that their relationship was
in the private domain. “I have been out with someone very famous before,”
she has said, recalling Brad.
Yet perversely, this only fuels speculation that their marriage is in trouble
and heightens public irritation with the couple. It feels they have
dishonoured the celebrity quid pro quo: we give you the wealth and acclaim
in exchange for a glimpse inside your dreamy lives.
Certainly Paltrow, for all her beauty, class and talent, lacks a warmly loyal
female fanbase. Perhaps because, unlike Renée Zellweger, say, she does not
appear to need us. She seems too superior, too perfect... or at least is
unwilling to reveal her flaws. Women admire her only as an upscale fashion
plate. Moreover she gives the impression of entitlement, as if her golden
career is something she was born to, but maybe it was. Certainly when she
refers to herself as “an artist” I muse that few British actors would use
that lofty term. And when I ask if she dreams up her own projects, sees
characters in books or history she’d love to play, she says, with supreme
confidence that the world will offer up its prizes: “You know, I always
believe that the right thing finds me.”
And for all her years in Britain, she still has that uptown Manhattan
preciousness that leaves you not knowing whether to laugh or scream.
Wrapping up, she asks me the ages of my children (11 and 9), then says with
feeling: “You see, mine will die without me there. It makes sense from a
Darwinian standpoint to have you there. Because by the time they’re 9 and 11
they won’t die if you’re not there. But mine will literally die, you know
what I mean!” I follow her from the room, expecting her to turn to say
goodbye but, instead without a word, she just keeps walking. Terry the
bodyguard, her American publicist, her two British publicists and a couple
of other nameless attendants bustle in her wake, out to a smoke-windowed,
black people carrier which sweeps away, leaving me in Dalí’s bordello alone.
Iron Man is released on May 2
