How easy is it to combine motherhood with movie stardom? Actress Gwyneth Paltrow today admitted worrying whether there would still be a place for her in Hollywood after she took time off to be a mother.

The star was speaking at the Cannes film festival, where her new film Two Lovers is showing in competition.

The movie is the tale of how a depressed young man's life is turned around after he moves back in with his parents.

Paltrow was asked if it was hard coming back after taking time off.

She said: "Yeah, it was in a way. I really did not know if there would be a place for me any more, especially if you're a woman and especially if you're not 25.

"Hollywood is pretty cut-throat and everybody's got a short memory and there's always somebody younger or hotter or prettier or whatever. I was very realistic about the fact that there might not be any more room for me. I definitely knew that I had lost my place that I had when I left.

"But I was hopeful that if I wanted to do good work then maybe the right thing would find me because I really felt like I had something to say again."

She said her experiences working with Robert Downey Jnr on Iron Man and Joaquin Phoenix on Two Lovers were once in a lifetime opportunities.

Paltrow said Two Lovers was a gift for her because she was going from being a mother at home for a long time, which was the greatest joy of her life, to feeling like an artist again.

She said her character decides to call off the relationship, which could start a positive chain of events, but she ends up in the same obsessive loop.

"The tragedy of my character is that she can't free herself," said Paltrow. "She can't see the big picture. She's probably going to have a life of smallness and disappointment because that's what she's choosing for herself."

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