Beauty and brains

http://www.canoe.ca/JamMoviesArtistsP/paltrow_gwyneth.html
Sunday, December 19, 1999

By ERIC FLOREN
Express Writer


 LOS ANGELES -- Behind every successful artist, it has been said, lies
self-doubt. Take Gwyneth Paltrow.

 Despite accumulating acclaim and awards, climaxing this year with a
best actress Oscar for Shakespeare in Love - Paltrow, 27, has some
dark doubts about her ability.

 Just ask where she keeps her Academy Award, that pinnacle of
perfection for any other thespian.

 "It's in storage. I haven't taken it out yet."

 You are kidding, right?

 "No. That thing freaks me out," she laughs.

 Why? Because of what it represents professionally, because it might be
impossible to live up to with future roles?

 "I don't know ... I'm still traumatized by the night. I'm very
disconnected. I disassociate from it for some reason. I haven't been
able to feel really good about it and feel like, 'hey, this is great.' "

 Why not?

 "I had such a difficult year. I just associate (winning the Oscar)
with a very difficult time personally. And there was so much pressure
in the weeks leading up to it, I felt like I couldn't get any air.
There was so much press and I remember them following me everywhere.
The paparazzi was with me the whole time."

 One night, while pursued by the paparazzi, Paltrow ran out of gas
because of a broken gas gauge in her rental car. "And they didn't even
give me a ride. They just took pictures of me filling my gas can.

 "And then I won and I had this intensely personal moment in front of a
billion people."

 But isn't that what you do for a living, having intensely personal
moments in front of people?

 "Noooo," corrects Paltrow. "Not real personal moments. I have my
character's personal moments - I don't have mine."

 So there you go. Possessing, as actor Philip Seymour Hoffman puts
it, "that deadly combination of beauty and brains," Paltrow doesn't
hesitate to speak her mind. Somehow you get the feeling that not only
was she the most popular girl in high school, but that lesser lights
trembled in her presence. Probably still do today.

 Dressed today in a grey tank top with sunglasses tucked into the top
and a long floor-length, black leather skirt, Paltrow's attire is a
far cry from what she wears in her current film, The Talented Mr.
Ripley, opening Christmas Day.

 The period thriller takes place in Italy during the 1950s and
director Anthony Minghella - a stickler for detail - insisted all
actresses wear girdles beneath their clothes.

 "The girdle was awful. It was so sweaty. You don't get any air. But
what was great about the girdle was how it helped you walk. It gives
you a sense, in a very physical way, of the  1950s' mentality and the
confinement of women in a way, and sociologically what was expected
of women.

 "It was a great tool, actually, but very uncomfortable. It itched
like a bastard!"

 In The Talented Mr. Ripley, Paltrow plays Marge Sherwood, the
girlfriend of American playboy Dickie Greenleaf, who is eventually
murdered by gay sociopath Tom Ripley, played by Matt Damon.

 According to director Minghella, who also wrote the screenplay, the
role was written for Paltrow. "She's a family friend. From the very
beginning I thought of her for the role and she was the first person
I cast.

 "The character of Marge in the film - womanly, trusting,
compassionate, a rebel in her own way - has as much to do with
Gwyneth herself as it has to do (with the character)."

 The role is full and complicated, and fleshing it out was a nice
challenge for Paltrow.

 "You start the film and she's innocent and light and sunny and very
sensitive and inclusive and, by the end of the movie, it's like the
light has gone out, the air has been squeezed out of her. She's
really different, she's really coming apart at the seams."

 Very much in demand as an actress, Paltrow does get to pick and
choose through an abundance of scripts.

 Upcoming films include Duets (directed by her dad) and Bounce,
opposite ex-flame Ben Affleck (that should get the rumour mill
churning again, not to mention the paparazzi).

 First attracting attention in 1993 for Flesh and Bone, other films -
besides Shakespeare in Love - include Sliding Doors, Great
Expectations, A Perfect Murder, Seven, Hard Eight, Malice and
Jefferson in Paris. Her first real critical acclaim came for her
starring performance in Emma.

 At the time of Flesh and Bone, which starred Meg Ryan and Dennis
Quaid, did you have any idea of where you were going with your craft?

 "No, I didn't. I was just a little girl back then."

 But didn't having parents in the business help? (She's the daughter
of award-winning actress Blythe Danner and producer-director Bruce
Paltrow.)

 "Everyone assumes that it would be an easier time," begins Paltrow.
"I felt like I had to work much, much harder to prove myself. I did a
lot of work to really good reviews but I just, I was ..." her voice
trails off.

 "With other people who just come out of nowhere, you know, it's like,
'wow, great.' But I had to work much harder to get the respect of
anybody else, it seemed."

 Do you recall a point when that went away, when you stopped worrying
about that? Or hasn't it?

 "Yeah," she says quietly, then laughs.

 Didn't it go away with Flesh and Bone?

 "Well, no, because ... that movie came out and I got a lot of
critical acclaim, which was great. And I started slowly working but
then I was still the daughter of my parents and then I was still the
girlfriend of (Brad Pitt, although she doesn't mention him by name,
instead saying "somebody famous").

 "So I think that kept putting these strikes against me in people's
minds.

 "I think, though, when Emma came out people started to say well, OK,
we have to admit that she's not terrible."

 One last question. If you win an Oscar for The Talented Mr. Ripley
are you going to put that one in storage, too? The academy may stop
giving them to you, you know.

 "I'll get it out of storage," she laughs. "I just have to make
peace with it first."