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時間: Mon Jan 17 16:39:20 2000
"I've heard so many rumors," she says, laughing now. "None of them are true."
Like the one that claims they're secretly together?
Gwyneth gives me a pained look. "Believe me, we're not."
This is torture for her. She obviously loved the guy. They broke up, okay.
"I guess I still don't undersatnd the public ramification of being one half
of such a well-known couple," she says. " I didn't think it affected me
while we were together. It will probably be some time before I understand
the dynamics of that, but right now it's too close." She spent the summer
collecting her thoughts in her journals ( "There are hundereds of them"),
talking to friends, to Winona. "Winona's just been really supportive,"
Gwyneth says, citing their shared experience in the spotlight as a source
of empathy. "There's not a lot of people who can relate when you say,
'I've broken up with my boyfriend, and it's been on the cover of People
twice.'" She does regret issuing a statement to columnist Liz Smith in
which she defended Pitt's character, because it only added to the
intrigue: "Responding to any of it gives import to what people have
written. But I just felt it was very unfair to paint him badly, to say he
was a bad guy, to say he didn't want to settle down, things that would be
very hurtful to him, and things that weren't true."
"I think she's dealt with the breakup amazingly well," says Mary Wigmore.
"She's worked really hard to understand how to deal with it - not just
the relationship, but the press. She's done a lot of work with herself."
Peter Howitt agrees, saying that when he saw Paltrow in New York City in
August, she seemed different, more solid somehow, as if she had acquired
some grown-up wisdom from the heartbreak.
It seems that way to me, too, in the Verbena garden, as Gwyneth clucks
to an apple-cheeked infant seated next to us. Now, turning, her voice
suddenly upbreat, she says, "It's been a really interesting and horrible
and wonderful time. I've learned so much. Instead of questioning how did
I get here, I'm asking myself, Where do I go? How do I choose to
proceed? What is my path? Which is a good thing to learn when you're
25."
Later, as we sail uptown in a cab, she seems almost playful as she
lounges lazily in the corner, her hips low on the seat, and asks me
what I think is sexiest in a man. It's an oddly cozy question to ask a
friend who will never grow to be an old one, as Rex Reed used to say,
but I play along and say with a laugh, "Arms, I suppose." Gwyneth
smiles a slow, far-off smile and, in a tone of old New York
sophistication, says, "I think good manners in a man are incredibly
sexy. Don't you?"
When we meet again several days later at her parents' generously
sedate country house north of the city, Gwyneth is wearing jeans, a
blue cotton-fleece sweatshirt, and her floppy shower sandals. Her hair
is held back by a wide black headband. She leads me into a large living
room with an immense stone fireplace at one end, many comfortable
chairs, and an open, professional-looking kitchen at the other. On the
white walls are dozens, perhaps a hundred, framed photographs of the
Paltrow-Danner family, many of them taken with friends and cousins. It
has been raining, and the dusk settles like smoke on the damp trees and
the lake beyond.
Gwyneth's father enters wearing a gray sweatshirt and a pair of running
shorts. Bruce Paltrow, the creator of The White Shadow and a producer
for St. Elsewhere, is a friendly, voluble, semi-gruff man with
attractive features and a scrappy sense of humor. He and Blythe Danner
have been married for 28 years; at the moment, Danner is in New Jersey
filming a movie. As Bruce fixes himself a cocktail, I ask Gwyneth about
the status of Duets, a picture about a couple of karaoke singers that
she and Pitt, at prebreakup, were to have starred in together, directed
by her father.
"We're going to do it,"she says emphatically (though they're looking
for a new costar now that Pitt is out of the picture).
"Is it the first time you will work together?" I ask Bruce.
"Yes," he says. "It's been my dream. She got to work with her mother
[in the miniseries Cruel Doubt]. Now its my turn."
After her father leaves the room, I ask Gwyneth what it's like to be
more famous then her famous parents. She looked startled.
"God, you know, I've never been asked that question before," she says.
"Umm..it's strange because - God, I've never thought about it! I'm
still trying to figure out what the advantages are to my situation.
There are - there are these incredible upsides." She thinks for a
moment. "It's funny when your cousins call you and say, 'I've stopped
having to spell my last name in restaurants. Thank you!' It's just
such a strange thing to bring to your family. I think my parents get a
kick out of it."
The fact that her fame still surprises her is refreshing in a woman
who is hailed for her talent. When invited to the White House last
year, to watch a screening of Emma with President Clinton, her first
reaction was to call up her friend Mary and scream, "You'll never
guess where I'm going. You have no idea!" It pleasantly shocks Gwyneth
to be treated as a start, which is evidence of the same naturalness she
projects onscreen. Howitt noticed this in Emma. "A lot of British
actresses, when they do this kind of upper-class, Jane Austen-period
stuff, put on a rather fake, lovely, you-must-come-over-for-tea
accent," says Howitt. "And you think, Stop it. But Gwyneth didn't seem
to be doing that. She was just like a young girl having a dilemma."
But one wonders how easy it will be for Paltrow, with a career already
running full throttle, to do as she hopes by downshifting to raise a
family when the time comes. She frequently points to the example of
her mother, who opted for more stage work as her children got older,
and Paltrow predicts that she, too, will be able to turn down plum
film roles in favor of family. Well, maybe. When we met for lunch,
she told me she planned to take the rest of the year off and look for
an apartment, saying, "It's really important to me that I do that
now." Now she suddenly informs me that she is going back to work in a
few weeks' time, to star in A Perfect Murder, Andrew Davis' big-budget
update of Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder, playing the Grace Kelly role
opposite family friend Michael Douglas.
Gwyneth is nothing if not resilient, and she may well follow her
mother's successful example and put her own family first. But I also
suspect that the outcome of her romance with Brad Pitt has caused her
to temper some of those earlier bright-eyed expectations. "I just
don't want to say, 'This is my plan,'" she tells me. " ' This is what
I'm going to do.' It's not life." She goes on, smiling a little. "You
have these images of tons of babies and tons of dogs and some great
house in Connecticut. And you know what? That may happen and that may
not."
It is getting late. I start to gather up my things, thinking not for
the first time how bright and funny and sophisticated Gwyneth is,
when I ask her if she plans to keep her hair short. The look caused
something of a sensation last spring. She shakes her head. "I don't
think so. It was great to cut it off for Sliding Doors. It didn't
scare me, and it wasn't a fashion choice."
"Well, I suppose it doesn't compare to the commotion caused by Mia
Farrow when she cut off her hair," I say. "Before she married Frank
Sinatra, I mean." Gwyneth looks at me politely but blankly. It's
obvious she hasn't the foggiest notion what I'm talking about. Mia
Farrow...Frank Sinatra...long hair....whaaa? Well, she has no idea.
"Dad, do you remember that?" she says, turning around to her father,
who has just come into the room. "When Mia Farrow cut off her hair?"
It takes Bruce about a quarter of a second to put it all together.
"Peyton Place, you mean?" he says. "It was a huge thing at the
time."
Gwyneth looks at us as if to say, "Give me a break! Frank..Mia...I
wasn't even born yet!" Her earnestness if almost beautiful. Gwyneth
Paltrow is young, after all.
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