Like Emma, Setting Her World All Astir
(by Margy Rochlin)

LOS ANGELES -- Perhaps not since infancy has 23-year-old Gwyneth
Paltrow been so much the center of her own universe. In the last
three years, she has received fawning reviews for playing mostly
ancillary characters in so-so movies. When she ventures out in
public with her boyfriend, curious onlookers gather, if not
precisely because they know who she is, but because the man who
is gazing at her so adoringly is Brad Pitt. This month, she
swans through her first leading role, in "Emma," based on the
Jane Austen classic, making it look easy to be an American
passing as England's most beloved heroine in a film overflowing
with acclaimed British actors.

After that came "Seven," starring Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt as
homicide detectives on the trail of a serial killer. As Tracy,
Mr. Pitt's spouse, Ms. Paltrow tried hard to work her magic. But,
ultimately, her dutiful wife was so clearly marked for doom that
Ms. Paltrow might as well having been wearing a sign that said
Plot Device.

"I really got beat up over that one," Ms. Paltrow says of "Seven,"
although the pundits reproved her not because they didn't like her
work but because they felt she was squandering her sizable gift.
("The film treats her in ways you wouldn't treat a dog," Janet
Maslin wrote in The New York Times.) In the end, Ms. Paltrow says,
the fuss forced her to come to terms with how she will make
professional decisions in the future.

"What I realized is that I don't really care what anyone thinks,"
she says. "I read the script and thought, 'If she's not full and
doesn't have a soul, then the movie won't work.' Then I thought,
'I'm the only one who can get this right,' which is egotistical."

Or merely confident. The golden offspring of a theatrical family
(her mother is the actress Blythe Danner; her father is the
television writer and producer Bruce Paltrow, who created "St.
Elsewhere" and "The White Shadow"), Ms. Paltrow's tutelage began
early on. Her summers were spent in Massachusetts, in the
Berkshires, watching Mom take curtain calls at the Williamstown
Theater Festival. "As soon as I could read, I was running lines
with her," Ms. Paltrow recalls. "My earliest memories are of
climbing on the artistic director's lap and crawling in and out
of rehearsals."

By the time she was 12, she'd gone from her observation post in
the wings to doing summer stock herself. In 1991, Ms. Paltrow
dropped out of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and
began acting full time. It is part of the growing Paltrow legend
that her first film assignment came about when the director
Steven Spielberg, a family friend, tapped her to play young
Wendy in his 1991 film "Hook."

As it happens, Ms. Paltrow had already made her screen debut
earlier that year in "Shout," a pre-comeback John Travolta
vehicle, which Ms. Paltrow categorizes as "so bad, it's
amazing." Her one speaking line consisted of a single word.
"Re-bec-ca," Ms. Paltrow recites, pretending to give as much
importance as one can to three dinky syllables.

But the screenwriter and director Paul Thomas Anderson ("Mortal
Combat") saw prospect in the radiant blond day player. "It didn't
matter that she didn't have anything to say," he says. "She still
made moments for herself." Two years later, when he cast his
movie "Hard Eight," which will be released in January, he chose
her to be Clementine, a self-destructive cocktail waitress and
prostitute.

"Gwyneth isn't afraid to do anything," says Mr. Anderson,
laughing about Clementine's strip-mall boutique wardrobe ("acid-
washed jeans") and penchant for applying makeup by the pound.
"She is totally not afraid to be unglamorous or despicable or sad
or funny or stupid."

Though Clementine is a liar and a cheat, Ms. Paltrow could still
summon nothing but affection for the disgruntled chippie. "I love
her," she says, "because she's strong, crazy and has her own code
of morals." Then again, Ms. Paltrow's minimum emotional requirement
for the women she portrays always seems to boil down to whether or
not they at least attempt to exert control over their own destiny.

Which is perhaps why Ms. Paltrow's voice goes flat when discussing
"Kilronan," a psychological thriller co-starring Jessica Lange that
was recently completed.

"Jessica is amazing, she's brilliant in this movie," says Ms.
Paltrow, struggling to find the right diplomatic take. In the film,
Ms. Lange plays an enraged mother-in-law who torments her son's
malleable bride, played by Ms. Paltrow. "But I'm just kind of this
victim, which is good because it taught me that I never want to do
that again." Then reflecting on the experience, Ms. Paltrow cranes
her lovely neck to the right, sticks out her tongue and makes a
soft, retching sound.

While it is moments like these that remind one that Ms. Paltrow is
still in her early 20's she also has poise and dignity to spare.
This year, at the Academy Awards, she made perhaps the classiest
showing of all the ingenues in shiny slip dresses who traipsed up
the red carpet. Throughout the long evening, she grinned and waved
excitedly, appearing to be having too much fun to mind that most of
the fans were screaming for her boyfriend, Mr. Pitt, whom she met
while making "Seven."

"I was just so proud of him, just so happy that we were there in
that capacity," she says of that night. Mr. Pitt had received a
best supporting actor nomination for "12 Monkeys." "Also, I
probably looked like I liked it a lot more than I do. It's just
that my dad always tells me, 'It's silly when people go to these
things and look bent out of shape. So smile! Be gracious! Or just
don't go.' "

When Mr. McGrath met Ms. Paltrow, he was immediately struck by the
fact that she was at the same stage of life as his willful, well-
bred protagonist. ("You know, it's harder than you'd think to find
an actress the exact right age," says Mr. McGrath. "You think
'O.K.: Drew Barrymore is Emma?' I don't think so.") Ms. Paltrow
also had the right measure of vitality, polish and dramatic
technique to hold his picture together. Of course, convincing the
rest of the cast, most of them British, that this relatively
unknown Yankee with the hunk boyfriend could pull it off was
another story.

"They were just ill at the idea," Mr. McGrath says. "At the reading,
the entire group assembled, and you could see them slumped in their
chairs. But I'm telling you, the minute she started, she became the
part right in front of them, and every one of those English spines
straightened right up."

But Ms. Paltrow talks about her evident talent for wholly absorbing
her characters the way she does about almost everything, which is to
say as if it is all part of a great and lucky accident.

"When you do a character like Emma, so many things are handed to
you," she says, noting that she has read every Jane Austen novel,
except "Persuasion." "All of a sudden you completely understand this
person and why she feels what she does, even though under the same
set of circumstances, you would never behave like her. I just loved
how Emma was a complete solipsist. And I loved how she pulls out of
it and really learns from her mistakes. She's a good girl, she's
just mixed up."

Toward the end of "Emma," there is a pivotal moment when Ms.
Paltrow's character realizes she has fallen in love with her good
friend Mr. Knightly (Jeremy Northam) and may lose him to another
woman. Within a matter of minutes, Ms. Paltrow deftly takes her
Emma through seismic shifts of moods: panic, adoration, sadness,
horror. It's a funny, poignant scene, just one more piece of
evidence to suggest why she is worthy of the tizzy she has been
generating in Hollywood.

Even Ms. Paltrow, who says she dislikes seeing herself on screen,
can muster praise, albeit faint, for her work in the film. "As
mammals," she says, wrinkling her forehead, "I don't think we're
supposed to see how we behave or what we look like in all kinds of
situations. But I'm getting better at it."