“Oh fuck, do I still know how to do this?” Gwyneth Paltrow wondered last fall, as she arrived on a film set for the first time in years.
Now 53, she had agreed to play Kay Stone, a onetime actress who — to the delight of Paltrow’s Mom group chat — is having an affair with Marty Supreme‘s titular character, a ping-pong phenom played by Timothée Chalamet. The film’s director, Josh Safdie, had arranged the production schedule so that Paltrow’s first scene would be the character’s return to stage.
“I was shocked to hear her shyly say, almost to herself, ‘I hope I remember how to do this,’ ” recalls Safdie, who insists Paltrow was the Grace Kelly of his youth, as he rattles off her early work in films like The Talented Mr. Ripley, Great Expectations and The Royal Tenenbaums. “There was a fine line between the vulnerability Gwyneth herself brought to the part and the vulnerability she brought for Kay.”
The daughter of actress Blythe Danner and the late TV director Bruce Paltrow had already won an Academy Award by 26 for her performance in Shakespeare in Love. But once her now-college-age children with ex Chris Martin were born, she stepped back. “She never left the A-list, she just wasn’t really responding,” says her pal Robert Downey Jr. Her focus shifted to raising them and, later, to launching and running Goop, a lifestyle company fashioned in her image. Sure, Paltrow still dabbled some — as Pepper Potts in Marvel films and later in husband Brad Falchuk’s Netflix series The Politician — but her participation in Marty Supreme feels more significant. Though the A24 film won’t be released in theaters until Christmas Day, an early screening at the New York Film Festival earned rapturous reviews, and its cast is already in the throes of a major awards campaign.
On a rainy morning in mid-November, Paltrow, who’s being honored with The Hollywood Reporter‘s Sherry Lansing Leadership Award for her professional and philanthropic contributions, settled in for a wide-ranging conversation about her Hollywood reemergence, her L.A. exodus and her famously divisive role in culture.
In 2020, you were asked if you ever felt like the acting bug might come back, to which you said: “Literally never. Nev–er.” So, what changed?
If I’m being completely honest, it’s not that the acting bug had bit. My children, all four of them, had left — Brad and I each have girls and boys the same age, and when I knew the boys were leaving for college, I started to have a real panic around my purpose and where I’m supposed to orient myself: Where do I want to live? Who am I? It was pretty profound.
I can imagine.
At the same time, Josh Safdie asked me to be in this movie. I wasn’t familiar with his work, but my brother, Jake, who’s a filmmaker, said to me, “You are doing this.” He was absolutely emphatic about it. Then I found out it was in New York City, and I thought this could be a really interesting thing to do during this transition. I want to be close to the boys, I’ll be closer to the girls. [All four are on the East Coast.] So I said yes, and then I was like, “Oh fuck, do I remember how to do this?” It had been seven years. But I didn’t get the bug back until I was on set doing the hair-and-makeup test. That’s when I was like, “Oh, what is this weird feeling I’m having? Oh my God, this is excitement. I’m actually really excited to be here.”
You’ve said you were also quite nervous. About what, exactly?
Acting is so weird, and all of us do it in such a different way. You can’t follow a template or learn a rubric. It’s not like I could be like, “Oh, yeah, I’ll get out my playbook.” I was like, “How the fuck did I use to do this?”
Josh Safdie said he wanted you for the role because “I wanted a landed gentry quality, a type of person who was completely unreachable.” OK, I’ll stop, why are you laughing?
It must be a quality that I give off. I come from a very WASPy mother with Mayflower-ish roots, daughter of the American Revolution, all that kind of stuff. So I think maybe epigenetically, there is some of that there. And I was a very privileged kid. I grew up on the Upper East Side, and I went to a great school and all the things. So some of the stuff that he sees, which is also the stuff I’ve been criticized for my whole life, is real.
One of the major shifts that’s happened since you stepped away was the addition of intimacy coordinators on set. What did you make of the experience?
I mean, it’s very cool. I know there were some quotes that positioned it like I was pooh-poohing the intimacy coordinator, which of course is not at all what I meant. What I meant was that I was totally surprised, like, who is this person? I think all of the protections that came from the #MeToo movement are great, but for me, personally, I was not used to that. It’s like, “OK, now he’s going to squeeze your boob,” or whatever, and I felt more embarrassed talking about it than just doing it. I’m from a different time, but if I was starting today, or if my daughter wants to go into this, I’m so glad that there’s now this role and that she will learn, OK, there’s consent and there are guardrails.
This part in particular had a fair amount of intimacy. Was that a consideration for you in taking it, and how does your approach or philosophy differ now versus 20 years ago?
Well, I’m probably less inclined to get naked. (Laughs.) But our sexuality is such an important part of who we are and what resonates in film, and I like the sort of freedom around that exploration. I really love Nicole Kidman’s approach to this. She’s just like, fuck it, I want to feel safe but I also want to be completely free as an artist to explore this in whatever way. I ascribe to her philosophy.
Like you, she’s been part of a recent trend of films featuring older women with younger men. For so long, The Graduate felt like the only real cultural touchstone. I’m curious what you make of the shift?
And The Graduate was fetishized and perceived as really off, right? And now it’s not perceived like that. It will never cease to amaze me how people underestimate women as the consumer. We drive markets — we create markets, so of course a 40-something woman is going to be excited about a sex scene with Timothée Chalamet. And of course women are going to be excited about this idea that there’s agency around sexuality and that older women are sexual. So I think it’s great, I’m all for it.
You’ve said your Mom text chats were blowing up when some on-set shots of you and Timothée kissing surfaced online last fall …
Blowing up. Blow–ing–up! I have my L.A. mom close friends and my English mummy friends, and they were all texting me. They know I don’t look at any rubbish sites, so they’re all sending me these pictures, like, “Yessss, G.P.!” Everyone was thrilled.
How did your children react?
I mean, my daughter’s so cool and so punk rock that she’s like, “Mom, this is awesome!” And my son was like, “Oh my God, I don’t want to see this.” He was kind of mortified. But I do think they’re actually excited to see this film because now they’re grown up and they can make this separation. I’m sure they’ll gag when I’m having a make-out scene, of course. But it’s funny, they haven’t really seen me in movies. Historically, they like me home, as Mom, and they don’t like to engage with the outside perspective of who I am.
Your daughter’s clearly a good sport. I couldn’t believe she was with you when you went on Call Her Daddy last year.
Oh, and loving it!
Alex Cooper was having you play “Fuck, Marry, Kill” and grilling you about your sex life with your famous exes. My daughters are still relatively young, so I can’t even fathom this. Neither of you were mortified?
When I was in there, there were a couple of questions where I was like, “Oh man, Apple.” (Laughs.) But I’m telling you, my daughter is so freaking cool. She gets it. We’re also really good friends, so it’s not like a weird-out.
You’ve been asked to play F.M.K. a few times now, and each time I’m surprised you’re game. It’s probably also why you’re a favorite for interviewers like Howard Stern. You go on these shows and you play along.
Yeah, you’ve got to. It’s funny because Stern tests you right away. I remember when I went on the first time, I was so nervous. I was like, “What horrible thing is he going to ask me?” I remember talking to friends who listened to him every day, and they prepared me. But the first thing he said to me — and it was a test to see if I was going to be uptight — was something like, “I love your mom, I used to jerk off to her.” To which my response was something like, “Well, I hope you never stopped.”
Amazing.
After that, we were good. (Laughs.)
Marty Supreme is already generating significant awards buzz. I’m wondering what your incoming calls look like now and how you’re thinking about what’s next.
They’ve increased. I’ve not said yes to anything yet. I thought about a couple of things, but timing-wise, I have a lot to manage with my company. I also don’t need to rush. I think if I was going to step back into this, I would do it differently than I did it last time.
How so?
I started doing this when I was 18, and it’s like I got dropped on top of a train, and the train just went. It was almost like how a young woman is trained to date. Like, “Do they want me?” No, no, do you want them? I never even stopped to say, like, “Is this a good project? Is this a good director?” And maybe you shouldn’t — you’re a kid and you’re doing a bunch of stuff and lots of things are exciting. But also there’s this insecure part of you that thinks you just have to keep doing it. I felt that I just had to keep saying yes to everything, and then I totally burnt myself out, such that when I had my daughter, I was like, “I quit. I’m never doing this again.”
You downshifted considerably.
I did. But I look at Leo’s career, and we started at the same time — Flesh and Bone, which was my breakthrough, came out when [DiCaprio’s What’s Eating] Gilbert Grape came out. That’s when I met him, and I think Leo has done such a beautiful job of managing his career. It’s been all about what he’s said yes and no to, and nobody explained that to me when I was in my 20s. So if I’m going to do it again, I’m going to take a page out of Leo’s book and be more discerning.
Do you ever think about what your career would look like now had you not stopped?
Never.
You were one of the first and most prominent stars to speak out about Harvey Weinstein‘s abuse. You had legitimate concerns about the repercussions. Have there been any?
You have to remember that I grew up with Anita Hill as my model of what happens. A woman is incredibly brave, she does the right thing, and then she’s eviscerated, and the man goes on to have all the power. We saw that happen again and again, so I really thought it could be cataclysmic for me. I was very reluctant to speak to a journalist, and throughout the investigation, I didn’t know if I’d go on the record. But during the course of my many conversations with Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey of The New York Times, I started to understand the depth, breadth and darkness of what had actually transpired, which I did not know.
Few did. That was his power.
Yeah, and once I did, I thought, “I have no choice here, I have to say something,” because I knew that me co-signing that would be a big deal. And I am so glad I did, and I’m so glad there’s now things like an intimacy coordinator. But it was really scary.
Do you feel there were repercussions for you?
I don’t think so, no. I was just so angry when I learned everything. And I’m an Enneagram 1 [on the popular personality test], so when I perceive injustice, I go scorched-earth, and I will die on that sword.
I didn’t have many interactions with Harvey, but I do remember being in his office once and clocking a prominently placed photo of you taken the night you won your Oscar, almost like a prize.
And an invitation, which makes me absolutely sick. … It’s also hard for me because my relationship with Harvey, after that incident, was very complicated, but it was also a great working relationship. We made incredible films together. We sort of got over that weird thing. [Weinstein allegedly sexually harassed a then-22-year-old Paltrow, who told her then-boyfriend, Brad Pitt, about the incident. He confronted Weinstein, and it never happened again.] And I was like, “OK, that’s behind us.” Harvey and I had lots of other fights about lots of other things, but I had this incredible creative run with him and his company. And so it’s complicated because I’m so proud of the work that we did, and it’s wild because he was so gifted at finding talent and understanding and nurturing it.
Shifting gears, you once said, “Being the person that people perceive me to be is inherently traumatic,” which I’m hoping you’ll unpack for me.
It means that I have so little say in the projections that people have, and it’s traumatic to be at the whim of these projections when it’s so misaligned with who you actually are. Especially as an Enneagram 1, you’re like, “I never said that. I didn’t mean that. Stop using my life as clickbait.” There’s just so much that can feel so unfair, and it feels like trauma. What I’ve been trying to get to recently is, is there any mechanism to not imbibe those misperceptions?
And is there?
I’m working on that. My therapist talks about the evil shadow, which is the part of you where rage lives — the part of you that will burn the fucking house down — and we do damage to ourselves by not embracing our shadows. When you close your eyes and get into evil shadow energy, there’s a freedom there, and I’m trying to experiment with that, because when I go into evil shadow energy, I don’t care what anyone’s misperception is. So, that’s my internal work these days. If somebody says something terrible that you read in a rag or whatever, instead of being like, “Hey, that’s not true, that’s not fair,” how about going into evil shadow energy and saying, “I don’t give a fuck.”
There’s this almost cultural obsession with you, which takes positive and negative form. Did it start when you and Chris Martin announced you were “consciously uncoupling”?
I think it really was when I sent out my first Goop newsletter [in 2008], even though it was like a turkey ragu recipe, which is still a fantastic recipe, by the way. I made it last week. But this idea that I was challenging the way that people saw me or the box that I fit in and, remember, this is like pre- newsletters, pre-Instagram, pre-Substack, pre-, pre-, pre-. People were like, “What the fuck is she doing? We don’t like this. This is weird.” I challenged a very comfortable perception of who I was, and inherent in that was this idea that I want something else, which became, like, why does she want something more or something else?
As in, how could she?
Yeah, how could she? And I was very early on a lot of stuff, in a very iconoclastic way, so people were already like, “Wait, we’re annoyed. We don’t want her to start a business. We like her in Sliding Doors. She already has enough as it is.” Then I started to talk about “weird” stuff, and it was like, “Great. Let’s lick our chops and take her down.”
I’ve tried to think of an industry comp.
Oh, so many of my peers are so good at avoiding all this. I was watching an interview recently with one, and I was like, “Oh, this is a master class in how to let nobody know you, let nobody know what you think, reveal nothing.” And I was like, I am not this person. I’m often like, “Gwyneth, why the fuck did you say that? Like, God, can’t you just be graceful and boring?”
Even your ski trial became a cultural obsession. [Paltrow was found not at fault for a 2016 collision.] The New Yorker called it your “best role in years.” I mean, there’s now a stage show parody.
Multiple! (Laughs.)
Personally, I think you should go see one. Just turn up in the audience in another killer outfit.
Now that would be funny.
You recently moved out of L.A., am I right?
Yeah, we’re in Montecito and Amagansett, like total country mice. But Los Angeles is a big part of who I am. I was born here, and it really runs through me, but [until about a decade or so ago,] I hadn’t lived in L.A. since I was a kid, except when I used to stay with Brad Pitt in Hollywood.
That sounds quite glamorous.
Oh, you should have seen that house. It was before he renovated it. It was literally falling apart. We lived in one tiny corner. Picture us in the guest, guest, guest bedroom, because that was the only toilet that worked.
OK, that’s considerably less glamorous.
But it was magical. Anyway, I really hadn’t lived here since I was in the sixth grade. I was always in New York, and then I was in London for a long time, and when Chris and I separated, he very kindly said, “Hey, if you want to go home, I’m game.” And we landed in L.A. because it’s where he was open to being — he’s not a New York City guy. So I built this beautiful life here with my kids, and it was a very magical time in Los Angeles. It was really going through a renaissance.
Even New Yorkers thought it was cool then.
Exactly. It was a great time to be here. But then the city took a big hit during COVID, and the threads never quite came back together. And then I couldn’t face staying in that house without kids. That house without sleepovers and pancakes, I just couldn’t do it.
Is there a long-term plan for Goop, or at least your involvement in it? Presumably you have investors who want to see —
Liquidity? Yeah.
How do you see it playing out?
When I started, I didn’t know what I was doing. It was just a newsletter, and then it had incredible traction, and someone was like, “You need to raise money so you can hire a team.” But I didn’t know at the time that there was like a 10-year horizon and people would want their money. And the truth is, I don’t want to sell this business. Of course, this will have to be something that I negotiate with my investors. At some point, do you have long-term capital come in and replace [those initial investors] and give people some liquidity? I’m starting to think about that stuff now. But I really love what I do, and I want to keep growing this business. The brand that we’ve built is so strong, and you can see that with Goop Kitchen, which is its own company.
I’ll admit, I ordered a Brentwood Chicken Salad from Goop Kitchen last night.
Oh, great, thank you. But, yeah, I’ll have to figure out this V.C. piece at some point. There are a lot of paths I could take. I definitely will not IPO. I sat on a public board, a female-founded public company, and the markets do not understand women and what we want, so that I will never do. Nev–er. I’d love to maybe at some point soon bring someone on to do the parts of my job that I’m not as good at and really don’t like. But for now, it’s working.
The entrepreneur life is often a rollercoaster, and not everyone is wired for it. Do you feel like your years as an actor, dealing with things like rejection, prepared you?
Completely. I always say that artists and entrepreneurs, we’re the same animal. It’s like you have to have this bizarre streak of self-belief and fortitude.
Almost to the point of delusion.
Not almost. To the point of delusion.
These days, it can feel like every young star has a beauty company. What do you make of it?
It’s great. When I see young women being entrepreneurial, I get excited because that was not possible in my day. In my 20s, we were leveraged for other brands, and we saw very little upside. So I love that these young women have ownership in what they’re doing, and there are a lot of different ways to do it. You could be really obtuse like me and do everything in-house, kill yourself, build product, blah, blah, blah. Or you could just pair with someone who’s already doing something, which is great too. I just chose to do it in the hardest of all possible ways.
Now, as you consider a more significant return to acting —
Maybe. Maybe. (Laughs.)
I’m not trying to rush you into anything, but does it make it harder to disappear into roles if we’ve heard you talk about vaginal steaming?
Yeah, I mean, does it? I don’t know. Definitely the way that I was trained and raised was to be mysterious, and you’ve seen a complete evolution to accessibility. And if you want to market things, you’re expected to have more accessibility. The data shows the more somebody has access to you, the more resonance there is and the more likely they are to convert on buying a movie ticket or buying the moisturizer. When I’ve had friends that don’t have social followings who want to start something, I’m like, “That’s going to be very, very hard.”
Your daughter has said that she’s interested in an acting career. Your mom was against you following in her footsteps. Do you feel the same way?
No. When I was starting out, my mother was looking at everything through a very protective lens, and it can be a very heartbreaking job — a lot of rejection, a lot of loneliness. And of course, as a parent, you want to spare your child all of that. But both of my children want to go into the arts, and now more than ever, the world needs artists. We need people to disrupt and challenge our existing ideas. Look at Lily Allen’s new album, or Rosalía’s, we need that kind of searing authenticity and radical artistic expression. So I’m thrilled they both want to do that, and let’s see how it goes.
Any advice for them that you wish you’d received at the time?
I spent so many years in pleasing mode, and what that means is you’re trying to bend yourself into some other idea of what somebody wants you to be. I just want them to be fully themselves and not give a fuck what anybody thinks.
Photographed by Emma Summerton
This story appeared in the Dec. 3 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
