From 'Seven' to 'Hard Eight' Gwyneth Paltrow's lucky
(by Luaine Lee)
BEVERLY HILLS (Feburary 26, 1996 13:12 EDT) -- Actress Gwyneth Paltrow
giggles as she bends her long legs and scooches onto the brown frieze
couch in a hotel room here.
"You want to see it," she grins, a wide smile spreading across her
perfect jawline and into her limitless eyes.
Of course, you want to see it -- the diamond that her fiance, actor
Brad Pitt, has given her.
A simple, emerald-cut diamond on a silver band illuminates her right
hand, and Paltrow is so shyly proud of it that it makes you giggle,
too.
Pitt designed it himself. She doesn't know how many carats it is. She
never asked.
It's like Paltrow not to ask. She's the kind of woman who puts stock
in more important things.
One of those things is her family. She's the daughter of actress
Blythe Danner and producer Bruce Paltrow ("The White Shadow").
Growing up in a tight-knit show-business family has helped broaden
her sense of perspective.
She's not worried about marrying another actor who happens to be the
object of relentless adulation. "It's easier for us because we come
from such good and solid families," she says, lighting up a Camel.
"It only helps that we're in the same business because it gives us
such a deep understanding of what the other goes through on a given
day.
"Because there are no egos involved and it's not any of that silly
Hollywood stuff -- we're both not very concerned with all of that --
so I think it really helps us," she says.
When they met it was love at first sight, at least for Pitt. Throwing
her head back, clapping her hands on her knees, she recalls, "I was
so nervous the day I met him. I was starting a movie and he was this
big movie star, so I was all nervous. It wasn't the first day, but it
was very soon thereafter," she says of her own growing affection.
"But it was love at first sight for him. I think men know. I think
when a man sees a woman across the room and says, 'That's the one!'
They really know. My dad said the same thing about my mother. I know
so many men who've had that experience. And we're always the ones
complaining: 'I don't have a boy friend, I want a boy friend.' And
then they go: 'You're for me!"'
Paltrow says that Pitt isn't anything like the lollipop hunk that
the teen magazines depict. "I don't know who this 'Brad Pitt' guy
is. I know a very nice, grounded, peaceful individual. It's a very
difficult position to be put in as a human being. And he handles it
with such grace and such warmth," she says.
Speaking of grace and warmth, Paltrow admits that it's excruciating
watching her sweetheart in a celluloid clinch on the screen.
"It's disgusting," she laughs. "It is VERY hard to watch. I've seen
'Legends of the Fall' so many times on cable that now I'm numb to
that one. And THAT was the hardest to get over. It's just not a
comfortable thing. You're not supposed to watch that. It's a very
strange thing," she shakes her head.
With the release of her latest film, "Hard Eight," Paltrow proves
that she, also, is an actor to reckon with. She plays a cocktail
waitress and part time hooker who falls in love with a good-hearted
loser.
Neither exactly Rhodes scholars, the two of them seek help from a
mysterious father figure when their imprudent actions throw them
into peril.
Pretty and pouty and petulant, Paltrow gives the performance of
her career as a woman who can't see beyond her baser needs.
The impulsive character she plays is completely different from the
24-year-old actress who spent "not very long" at Santa Barbara
College before she decided to devote her energy to acting.
It wasn't a latter-day choice. She'd known since she was a little
girl that performing was what she was meant to do.
Paltrow enjoys acting because, for her, it's a transformation. "I
love stepping into somebody else's skin and understanding their
psychological makeup and the way they go about things. It's just
a magical experience. It's very difficult to describe when you hit
a moment and everything's just perfect and you've tapped into
something, it feels like flying," she says.
Today she looks like a woman out of the '30s with her blonde hair
short, straight and combed back off her face. She wears a tight-
fitting knit black skirt, almost to her ankles, and a matching
wine-colored tunic with long sleeves. She towers on two-inch wine-
colored platform shoes that make her seem even taller than she is.
When she decided to forsake the rest of her college studies for
acting, she sparred with a few doubts.
"When I started acting I set a goal for myself. I said if I haven't
achieved something by the time everybody else graduates -- all my
friends graduate -- I'm going to be in big trouble, feel like I
really messed up."
But parts began coming her way almost immediately. "Right away I
started acting, started supporting myself. By the time when
everybody graduated I had already done 'Flesh and Bone' and 'Mrs.
Parker and the Vicious Circle' and "Jefferson in Paris.' So I was
already like the new whatever from 'Flesh and Bone,' the new
rookie, and in all the papers and stuff. So all my friends thought
I was getting somewhere. So I felt validated."
One of the hardest parts of her job is the sudden fame and
attention that she and Pitt prompt wherever they go.
"There are days when it seems harder because you're inundated
with people doing inappropriate things," she admits, blowing the
cigarette smoke away from her visitor.
"And you think, 'I really can't take this.' And some days when
you're really Zen about it. You get more and more used to it; more
accustomed to the fact that it exists. You get used to it more
because you're accustomed to it. But I don't think it ever gets
easier."
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