A fake nobody

By STEVE PERSALL

c St. Petersburg Times, published December 24, 1999


LOS ANGELES -- Hollywood blondes are supposed to have more fun.
But, Gwyneth Paltrow has an Oscar, so she can do whatever she
pleases with her hair.

It's still a bit startling when the fairest of them all arrives
for an interview with a fudge-colored 'do.

Don't rush to the salon, copycats. This is only temporary, an
actor's sacrifice for her next role in Don Roos' melancholy
romance Bounce. Right now, Paltrow is enjoying the rare treat
of anonymity.

"Now I can go out in New York with my parka and my sunglasses
and nobody has an idea of who I am," she says, smiling at her
little game. "That's really fun for me. It's been like a real
kick in the pants, just to remember how somebody who is
perfectly polite and a nice citizen really gets treated in New
York."

Sounds like a charade The Talented Mr. Ripley would enjoy.
Paltrow co-stars in the thriller about a polite psycho who
absorbs the identities of others. In the film, Ripley
proclaims: "It's better to be a fake somebody than a real
nobody." Paltrow puts a playful twist on the line:

"Better to be a fake nobody than a real somebody, huh? That's
good. That's my new motto."

Paltrow is still getting accustomed to being a real somebody
in a business where everybody wants to be one. The Academy Award
for Shakespeare in Love made her do it faster than she expected.
She jokes about nobody wanting to hear some poor-little-movie-
star sob story. But, washing that fame right out of her hair --
and the Ripley comparison -- gets her talking about her roots.

"It's not about changing my identity; it's about getting back to
my identity," Paltrow says. "So it's exactly the opposite of
Ripley. It's about reclaiming my identity as a human being and
not letting the projections of the rest of the world affect the
way I perceive myself.

"I didn't start out wanting to get known, just to be a good actor
and get good parts. The whole getting-known thing is just a part
of that."

Nine years ago, Paltrow was thrilled when she was first
recognized in public. Actor Kelly Lynch approached her after
seeing her breakthrough role in Flesh and Bone. Paltrow still
beams when recalling the moment, but too many of those moments
have piled up since then.

"It's odd and difficult when all that attention is focused at
you, especially as an actor," she says. "You want to go observe
other people, just to see what life is like and how people are
interacting. If everybody's staring at you and trying to hear
your dinner conversation, it makes gathering material from life
difficult."

Paltrow's uneasy feelings about fame peaked with her emotional
acceptance speech at the Oscars in March. Her father, television
producer Bruce Paltrow, was enduring cancer treatments at the
time, and her grandfather had recently died. Tabloids had just
gained interest after Paltrow's romances with Brad Pitt and Ben
Affleck.

"And, then I had this intensely private moment in front of a
billion people," Paltrow says. "I felt really exposed and
embarrassed. Afterward, I just got in bed and caught a bad
fever. It took me a long time to feel I could go back out into
the real world.

"Strange experience. I hope in the near future I can look back
and say, wow, how fantastic. But I haven't found that yet."