She's uneasy with fame
Paltrow trying to cope with being 'one of those people'

http://www.canoe.ca/JamMoviesArtistsP/paltrow_gwyneth.html
August 7, 1996
By BRUCE KIRKLAND
Toronto Sun


HOLLYWOOD -- The night before her interviews for Emma, actress Gwyneth
Paltrow was lounging by a pool with her boyfriend Brad Pitt and found
herself in the mood for a relaxing whirl in the jacuzzi.

They were ready to strip and jump in. "It was pitch black but I said
to him: 'Whoa, wait a minute, we'd better go and put on bathing
suits!' You never know!"

The fear was that some paparazzi would be lurking in the bushes
waiting to snap yet another shot of the famous couple indulging in a
nude frolic. On a Caribbean vacation last year, they were caught on
film sunbathing au naturel.

"It's scary," Paltrow laments. "That you have to think in those terms
is frightening. In your own house when it's pitch black and it's
possible that someone might be there with an infra-red camera, isn't
that sad?"

Fame, says Paltrow, is strange to her, even though she has been
around it all her life. The 23-year-old Los Angeles-born, New York-
raised actress is the daughter of actress Blythe Danner and TV
producer Bruce Paltrow, who created TV series such as St. Elsewhere.
Steven Spielberg, who cast her as Wendy in his Peter Pan fantasy
Hook, is a family friend.

Yet her own growing fame, and the notoriety that Pitt has generated,
is quite another matter. It's personal. It's peculiar.

"I'm trying," she says of coping. "It's very difficult to explain. I
understand why it's interesting to people but I just feel that
nothing's different. I forget that I'm a recognizable person and, if
someone's looking at me in the market or something, it's like, 'What?'
And then I go, 'Oh yeah, I'm one of those people.' It's silly. It's
just absurd."

And it will get worse long before it gets better. Paltrow stars as
Jane Austen's meddling heroine Emma Woodhouse in Emma, which opens
Friday. Paltrow, already acclaimed for supporting turns from Flesh
And Bone to Seven (where her head ended up in a box), is about to
become a huge star herself.

Ironically, given Paltrow's aversion to poking her nose in other
people's business and her discomfort when the media pokes into hers,
Paltrow plays a meddler. Emma Woodhouse is a charming but
irrepressible matchmaker.

"It speaks a funny truth, because it shows us that this has already
been human nature," Paltrow observes. "We've always been interested
in what other people do." And there is a hierarchy to the interest.
"Then it was: 'What are the aristocracy doing?' And now it is: 'What
are the famous people doing?' I think people always like to compare
their own experiences to somebody else's and especially to someone
they think is a little more interesting."

When fame takes a negative spin, Paltrow gets feisty about it.

"It's like the Hugh Grant situation," she says.

" My God, he just made a mistake that a lot of men do and (they)
never get caught doing. He had become such a darling that everyone
couldn't wait to crucify him. Yet it was something between him and
his family and his girlfriend and nobody else's business."

Emma Woodhouse would have gotten involved in Grant's dilemma.
Paltrow says it's best to stay out of it. Which is why she remains
intrigued by Emma, the ultimate busybody.

"It was fun to play, because I don't think I share any of those
qualities. I'm certainly not a matchmaker and I pretty much let
people alone. I don't meddle in people's lives. But I think it's
really important to see a heroine of a film who is not perfect and
makes real mistakes and really grows and learns from it."