To Have And To Hold

Emma's Gwyneth Paltrow has beauty, success - and now the sexiest
fiance alive

http://people.aol.com/people/970113/features/cover.html


There was reason to question the buzz. after all, over the past
year countless reports that Brad Pitt had proposed to Gwyneth
Paltrow had run up against the same official disclaimer: No way;
not now. As recently as early December, a Pitt spokeswoman had
dismissed an engagement rumor as "completely fabricated," and
Paltrow herself had told PEOPLE a while back, "When I know, I
will call you." Why, then, should the scuttlebutt that spread
from watercooler to Web site to prime-time TV just days before
Christmas have been any different? Paltrow's mother, actress
Blythe Danner, apparently didn't believe that it was. On Dec.
19, when Entertainment Tonight asked her, she was adamant:
"They're not engaged. I'm the mother. I know."

Maybe so, but bear in mind, the 24-year-old Paltrow is no longer
Mommy's Little Girl. Since starring in the critically acclaimed
Emma last summer, Paltrow has established herself as a long-
legged, fresh-faced, supremely elegant symbol of gen-X style.
And to Pitt, Paltrow is something more precious: "My angel," he
called her at last year's Golden Globe Awards. As everyone knows,
it has been a good year for angels, and within hours of Danner's
denial, in Mendoza, Argentina, where Pitt is filming the
adventure Seven Years in Tibet, he asked his for her hand in
marriage. Paltrow wasted no time saying yes--or in contacting
her parents back in New York's Westchester County. "They're
engaged!" her father, producer Bruce Paltrow, told PEOPLE's
Mitchell Fink after hearing the news. Speaking on behalf of both
families, he added, "We are thrilled. We think it's perfect."

The next day, Pitt took a break from filming and flew with
Paltrow on a private jet to his hometown of Springfield, Mo.,
where they celebrated the engagement with his family over
Christmas. Next stop: New York, to be with Paltrow's parents.
While the two rejoiced, however, the announcement sent some Pitt
fans into a deep mope. "I can't believe it's for real this time,"
wrote Internet surfer Martie Lawrence. "[Gwyneth] is one lucky
girl. . . . Let's hope it's a long engagement. He can always
change his mind."

Fat chance. A serious chunk of female kind may see Paltrow as the
Luckiest Woman Alive. But Pitt clearly feels he has done well too.
When he is tense, he has said, Paltrow calms his nerves. When he
needs inspiration, she is his muse. She adores his dogs (mutts
Todd Potter and Saudi and weimaraner Purty). She encourages him
to read. And to pick up his clothes. She thinks nothing of hopping
in a car at 4 a.m.--as she did when she finished shooting her
forthcoming thriller, Hush, in Virginia last June--and driving
five hours to be by his side in New York City. Or flying more
than 5,000 miles to Argentina, where over the past four months
the couple have made several friends in the picturesque city of
Mendoza.

"They are like adolescents in love," says Dr. Horacio Cervo Zenie,
Pitt's physician on the set. Zenie has seen them "feeding each
other, kissing, doing things that people who are madly in love do.
As soon as Gwyneth would arrive on the set, Brad would rush off and
give her a big hug. You can't help but admire that." Adds Maria
Teresa de Barbeira, a Mendoza restaurant owner who cooked dozens
of Italian-style meals (including one of his favorites, paglia e
fieno) for Pitt: "It is like they are acting out a romantic scene
in a movie. But it is real life and they are not acting. They are
just very much in love."

Maybe so, but bear in mind, the 24-year-old Paltrow is no longer
Mommy's Little Girl. Since starring in the critically acclaimed
Emma last summer, Paltrow has established herself as a long-legged,
fresh-faced, supremely elegant symbol of gen-X style. And to Pitt,
Paltrow is something more precious: "My angel," he called her at
last year's Golden Globe Awards. As everyone knows, it has been a
good year for angels, and within hours of Danner's denial, in
Mendoza, Argentina, where Pitt is filming the adventure Seven
Years in Tibet, he asked his for her hand in marriage. Paltrow
wasted no time saying yes--or in contacting her parents back in
New York's Westchester County. "They're engaged!" her father,
producer Bruce Paltrow, told PEOPLE's Mitchell Fink after hearing
the news. Speaking on behalf of both families, he added, "We are
thrilled. We think it's perfect."

The next day, Pitt took a break from filming and flew with Paltrow
on a private jet to his hometown of Springfield, Mo., where they
celebrated the engagement with his family over Christmas. Next stop:
New York, to be with Paltrow's parents. While the two rejoiced,
however, the announcement sent some Pitt fans into a deep mope. "I
can't believe it's for real this time," wrote Internet surfer Martie
Lawrence. "[Gwyneth] is one lucky girl. . . . Let's hope it's a long
engagement. He can always change his mind."

Fat chance. A serious chunk of female kind may see Paltrow as the
Luckiest Woman Alive. But Pitt clearly feels he has done well too.
When he is tense, he has said, Paltrow calms his nerves. When he
needs inspiration, she is his muse. She adores his dogs (mutts Todd
Potter and Saudi and weimaraner Purty). She encourages him to read.
And to pick up his clothes. She thinks nothing of hopping in a car
at 4 a.m.--as she did when she finished shooting her forthcoming
thriller, Hush, in Virginia last June--and driving five hours to be
by his side in New York City. Or flying more than 5,000 miles to
Argentina, where over the past four months the couple have made
several friends in the picturesque city of Mendoza.

"They are like adolescents in love," says Dr. Horacio Cervo Zenie,
Pitt's physician on the set. Zenie has seen them "feeding each
other, kissing, doing things that people who are madly in love do.
As soon as Gwyneth would arrive on the set, Brad would rush off and
give her a big hug. You can't help but admire that." Adds Maria
Teresa de Barbeira, a Mendoza restaurant owner who cooked dozens of
Italian-style meals (including one of his favorites, paglia e fieno)
for Pitt: "It is like they are acting out a romantic scene in a
movie. But it is real life and they are not acting. They are just
very much in love."

Neither her mother nor her father, a writer-director-producer best
known for the TV dramas St. Elsewhere and The White Shadow,
encouraged her to get into show business. They wanted their
children to go to college and to learn about history and art--to
be, in a word, cultured. To that end, when Paltrow was 11, the
family left the West Coast and settled into a town house on
Manhattan's Upper East Side. She enrolled in Spence, an
academically demanding private girls school, and struggled to stay
afloat. "You cannot believe the classes--law and physics in the
seventh grade!" she told Vogue. "I was at sea."

Today, Paltrow, who won the VH1 Fashion Award for best personal
style in October, may be the kind of "pure, natural beauty" who
has helped redefine modern elegance, says fashion designer Calvin
Klein, a Paltrow favorite. But back at Spence, Paltrow, like
adolescents everywhere, struggled with her looks. "I had braces,
and I was skinny and little, and I had a bad haircut," she later
complained to New York magazine. By her high school years, she had
blossomed into the 5'9" stunner she is today. And while she was
popular with classmates, some couldn't help resenting her. One
Spence student told New York she remembered standing next to
"Gwyn" in the locker room before a swim practice, naked: "She said,
`Isn't it interesting how different people's bodies are?' Like,
comparing mine to hers. And I just wanted to hit her."

By the time Paltrow graduated from Spence in 1990, she had led a
full and varied high school existence. She had discussed Russian
literature with her friends over coffee and cigarettes ("It's
mental posturing," she later told the Los Angeles Times), dabbled
in theater (playing Titania, Queen of the Fairies, in a school
production of A Midsummer Night's Dream), had her heart broken by a
blond California surfer ("Oh, my God," Paltrow told Vogue, "the love
I felt for that boy") and, when the sun went down, partied with her
pals. While her parents slept, she told The New York Times in 1994,
she would sneak out, leaving a note on her pillow: "Dear Mom and
Dad ...(next)


-- PHOTOS from top: Gwyneth Paltrow and Bradd Pitt (Photofile),
Paltrow as a kid (Tony Costa/Outline), Paltrow in Seven (Interphoto/
Sipa Press)