Paltrow born Bard to the bone
Shakespeare In Love actress weaned on playwright Will right from the womb

http://www.canoe.ca/JamMoviesArtistsP/paltrow_gwyneth.html
Thursday, December 17, 1998
By JIM SLOTEK -- Toronto Sun


NEW YORK -- To British actors, those champions of mannerism, style
and rigour, it's a little disconcerting to see an American brat like
Gwyneth Paltrow come in, and slip on Shakespeare like a pair of
pantyhose.

"It was uncanny, really," says John Madden, director of the literate
comedy Shakespeare In Love, of his leading lady, who had never
performed so much as a word of Shakespeare in her life. "The take
would start and she would transform herself into another culture and
place. Then it would be over and the first word out of her mouth
would be (voice goes nasal) 'AWESOME!' "

Which cuts to the contradiction in meeting Gwyneth Paltrow, a
leading lady who has almost single-handedly resurrected the word
'gamine' from Audrey Hepburn's grave.

This woman of corsets and bodices, of clipped English accents in
movies like Great Expectations or Sliding Doors, or cultured
American accent in A Perfect Murder, is after all, a child of
Hollywood, whose relaxed manner of speaking carries an unmistakable
frisson of the Valley.

"Oh Gawd, my muthurrr!" the 26-year-old Paltrow says, with a laugh,
when I ask -- given that she's never performed Shakespeare -- if
she's ever seen it. "She used to take us to tons of Shakespeare. It
was all about classical theatre in my house." Mother would be
veteran actress Blythe Danner, dad is TV producer Bruce Paltrow
(St. Elsewhere).

"I mean, when I was 13, I'd rather have been watching The Cosby
Show. I saw Shakespeare in the Berkshires all the time. And my
mother was pregnant with me when she did Twelfth Night. So we're
talking a long history of me and Shakespeare."

So Gwyneth and Will were fated to meet -- something she had in
common with Viola de Lesseps, the noblewoman in the Tom Stoppard-
scripted Shakespeare In Love, whose passion for the stage leads her
to dress as a boy in hopes of landing a part in the young Bard's
new play Romeo And Ethel The Pirate's Daughter. Did I mention this
was a comedy?

In fact, for all its Iambic pentameter, Shakespeare In Love is a
thinly-veiled spoof of modern Hollywood, featuring a gangsterish
producer (Tom Wilkinson), a vain, handsome actor who is only cast
for marquee value (Paltrow's real-life boyfriend Ben Affleck) and
a creatively-blocked playwright who is as much con-artist as Bard
(Joseph Fiennes, younger brother of Ralph). Only when he finds
doomed, tragic love with his leading man, er, lady, does he find
the inspiration to finish his play.

Says Paltrow of the street-level treatment Stoppard gives
Shakespeare: "I mean, I think this is just a really charming way to
look at him. Whoever he was, he was just a guy, y'know?

"Tom Stoppard's script just operates on so many levels. He's using
history, what Shakespeare has written, has theoretically written
and would write --- and it's woven together so well. It's just
infinitely playable."

The genderbending appealed to her, particularly those scenes that
involved playing opposite "fellow" boys. "Their reaction to me as a
boy was so funny. I was this new species coming towards them, then
they finally got used to me and treated me as a boy, and their
energy was very masculine. Then I came on for the scenes as a
woman, all corseted, and they'd be like, 'Wow, oh yeah, you're a
girl!' "

Then, of course, there was the accent -- which by her account was
not the walk in the park her director makes it out to be. "I did a
lot of work. This fabulous guy from the Royal Shakespeare Company
helped us with text and articulation. In fact, I worked harder than
I ever worked. I would love to do Shakespeare again. My accent
coach, Barbara Barker, is just dying for me to do As You Like It.
Although I think if I did it in England, I'd be crossing the line.

"My English friends are supportive," says Paltrow, who considers
the place a second home. "But I listen to myself and hear mistakes,
so I'm sure other people can too."

Up next: The Talented Mr. Ripley, from Patricia Highsmith's novel,
directed by Anthony Minghella (The English Patient).

"I just finished it in Rome, which was incredible to walk around
in. You walk by buildings 2,000 years old and realize you're
looking at the birth of civilization. You feel very small."