A STAR IS BRED
Even back at Spence, Gwyneth Paltrow had the looks, the brains, the
personality, and got all the guys. Now, at 23, she has got THE guy and,
with her remarkable performance in Emma, is about to become a major
movie star.
(by Nancy Jo Sales)
Gwyneth Paltrow alights in the Pembroke tearoom of the Lowell Hotel.
She is wearing a black leather jacket and vinyl pants, a twinkle of a
diamond bouncing from a short chain around her long neck. Even off-
screen, she appears backlit. If she came with a soundtrack as well, it
would be something with harps, a choir, and a Bootsy Collins bass line.
Her brilliant hair twisted back in a tossed-off bun, she has the look
of a funky angel come to earth to do some good deeds and maybe get in
some shopping at Agnes b.
Doug McGrath, the 38-year-old director of Emma, and I, two perfectly
looking people, dwindle in our chairs as Gwyneth arrives. We grow
momentarily silent, our feet now barely scraping the ground. Gwyneth's
beautiful, it's ema-barrassing.
Seconds after arriving, Gwyneth mentions the unmention- able-the
subject her publicist has made verboten. "Brad loved the movie,"
Gwyneth tells McGrath, leaning in for the kiss. "He thinks you did a
great job. He was so into it. Omigod."
McGrath turns, actually blushing. "I hypnotized her before this
interview," he explains.
A lady in a white apron wheels around the tea cart. Gwyneth orders an
unpronounceable Chinese brew. The secluded tearoom is otherwise empty.
McGrath and I note that it seems the perfect place to conduct an
interview, or an affair; then we both are blushing.
Gwyneth just smiles, and smiles.
Emma is Gwyneth Paltrow's twelfth film, and she's all of 23. In the
others (Seven, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, Jefferson in Paris,
The Pallbearer), Gwyneth played secondary roles that got her notice but
nothing like the coronation she's about to receive. Her portrayal of
Jane Austen's 1816 heroine is uncannily authentic, the kind of
performance movie folks love to herald as "breakthrough."
"A lot of people are talking about a Best Actress nomination," crows
Harvey Weinstein, the head of Miramax, which is releasing Emma. "God
willing, she'll get it. But either way, this is going to propel her
into the higher ranks of American actresses."
"Emma will follow Gwyneth the way Holly Golightly followed Audrey
Hepburn," says Steven Haft, producer of Emma and Dead Poets Society,
"in that it was the perfect blending of an actress and a role."
"She fits into Austen's world perfectly," agrees David Ansen,
Newsweek's movie critic. "You wouldn't want to see Demi Moore as
Emma."
Neither, it seems, would Gwyneth. She doesn't think much of anyone's
improving the classics, whether by tacking happy endings on to
tragedies like The Scarlet Letter or even updating social comedies
like, for example, Emma. "I think it's sad," she says, lighting up
her first Camel,"that America's main cultural reference to this movie
will be Clueless. I mean honestly."
"I went to Spence, an all-girls private school," Gwyneth continues.
"We did not read Emma. We read Pride and Prejudice and Sense and
Sensibility. i had a very difficult time gett- ing into Pride and
Prejudice. Parts of it are so rambling, I really was like, oh, Lord."
"Aren't you always secretly wishing that a carriage will break loose
and run over that mother?" McGrath jumps in on Pride and Prejudice.
"I wanted a chandelier to fall on that mother," says Gwyneth.
Gwyneth and her director finally agree that Emma is a much better
novel than Pride and Prejudice. "Emma is funny," says Gwyneth. "It
made me laugh so many times. Brad was laughing when he watched it-
and he wouldn't go and see it in the theater, you know what I mean?
He went to see The Rock, okay?
"In the picnic scene"-the one where Emma humiliates poor old prattle-
mouth Miss Bates-"Brad was like,'You bitch! That was so mean!'" When
Gwyneth does Brad, she lowers her voice to a studly, slow-witted
baritone. (It's affectionate, I think.)
"He was hitting me," Gwyneth says. " 'You're evil!' he said. And I
said,'It's not my fault; it's a movie, hello? Good morning?'"
The Miss Bates scene is the pivotal moment in the novel. Emma, whom
Austen describes as "handsome, clever, and rich" but with "a
dispostion to think a little too well of herself," can't resist a
nasty remark at her silly old-maid neighbor, a woman who wouldn't
hurt a soul. Emma's cruel wit is her fatal flaw.
"That's on of my flaws," admits McGrath. "It so dis- turbed me." The
crushing picnic scene was what compelled the Academy Award-nominated
screenwriter-he cowrote Bullets Over Broadway with Woody Allen-to
undertake Emma as his first-time directing project. "You make some
little smarty-pants remark just to make people laugh, and think, Oh,
she's not going to get that, and then she does get it, and you look
like the smallest, meanest person."
Gwyneth nods knowingly. She reflects, "Girls' schools are a lot like
that-especially these private Upper East Side schools. The one I went
to certainly was."
MISS BATES, CIRCA 1996, HAS A LOW-LEVEL JOB IN PUBLISH- ING. "I can't
believe I'm telling you this," she says with a nervous laugh. She
goes to great lengths to first explain that she always liked "Gwyn"
when they were students at Spence, from which they graduated in 1990.
"She was just very straight- forward about things. She wasn't like
some of these people there were. Spence people could be really mean.
They could say awful things to each other...."
And yet she still remembers, with a degree of emotion that puts a
catch in her voice, standing naked with Gwyneth Paltrow in the locker
room before swim practice one day as they climbed into some "hellish"
Speedo bathing suits, the team uniform. "She said, 'Isn't it
interesting how different people's bodies are?' Like comparing mine
to hers. And I just wanted to hit her."
If the perceived affront persists, it may be because the one who
delivered it is now everywhere and has, it seems, everything. And
this Spence graduate is by no means alone in her inability to simply
let Gwyneth go.
"Everyone's like, 'Omigod, I have this shitty job and Brad Pitt is
kissing her feet...," says a Brearly graduate who knew Gwyneth, and
who also has a low-level job in publishing.
"We all went to college and worked really hard, and now she's the
newest, hottest thing dating the Sexiest Man Alive," says a
Nightingale-Bamford alumna, also working in the lower rungs of
publishing.
"People are jealous of her. I'm jealous of her."
This young woman knew Gwyneth only slightly--from socializing with
the popular crowds at schools like Spence and Nightingale, Dalton,
Chapin, and brother institutions like Collegiate and St. David's--
but she says she still finds her- self obsessing about Gwyneth.
Gwyneth the Goddess. Gwyneth the It Girl. "Even people who don't
know Gwyneth measure themselves against her success," she says.
"Gwyneth makes us feel extremely lame."
Gwyneth's precipitous and glorious ascendancy seems to function as
a very public reminder of who their lives have yet to deliver the
fabulousness they were promised as their birthright. It's a blow
to suddenly have to realize, at the age of 23, that having an Ivy
League education, a parent who kicks ass on Wall Street, or even
beauty (helped along, perhaps, by a little cosmetic surgery and
lots of trips with Mom to Georgette Klinger) doesn't necessarily
mean you're destined to run the world yourself--or ever be on top
of it the way Gwyneth Paltrow seemed to be one shiny afternoon in
L.A. this year, when she showed up at the Oscars in a slinky Calvin
Klein creation, on the arm of Brad Pitt.
Brad, Brad. Brad, Brad, Brad. Gwyneth's classmates walk by
newsstands, and People magazine hollers BRAD IN LOVE! They turn
on the Golden Globe Awards, and Brad Pitt is accept- ing his Best
Supporting Actor award for 12 Monkeys, giving thanks to "my angel,
Gwyneth." (Cut to: Gwyneth in the audi- ence, shaking with pride
and looking so tastefully beautiful.)
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