Gwyneth Paltrow Explains Why She Doesn’t Really Want To Act Anymore
Thanks to more than a decade’s worth of enthusiasm for questionable health claims and dubious wellness treatments, it’s sometimes easy to forget that Gwyneth Paltrow hasn’t always been a youth-and-vagina obsessed high-end snake oil pseudo-scammer. And as it turns out, there’s a whole generation of babies born that will never know Gwyneth as an actress. According to Gwyneth, she’s totally done with acting.
A few months ago, Gwyneth revealed that she really wasn’t “passionate” about acting anymore, and being a business woman is her priority now. She said she was very lucky to have an acting career, but after a while it felt like it wasn’t what she wanted to be doing. This time, she’s a lot less diplomatic. Gwyneth spoke to Harper’s Bazaar about where she’s at now, and it sounds like she’s moved far, far away from acting as a favor to her gag reflex.
If Paltrow comes across one of her films herself, the reaction is visceral. “I vom,” she says. “I gag. I hate it.” Does she ever feel like the acting bug might come back? “Literally never – nev-er,” she says.
Gwyneth says that the final straw for her was shooting Proof while pregnant and that’s when she decided to never take the lead in a movie again:
“When I was acting I really burned myself out. When the flywheel kicked in, I was doing three to five movies a year. I really got to the point where even the little things, like sitting in the van going to set, getting your makeup touch-ups, and everything – I really don’t know that I can bear it. The last movie I starred in, I was pregnant with my daughter. It was a movie called Proof, an adaptation of a play I did in London, and I was like, ‘I’ve had it. I can’t do this anymore.’ I had morning sickness and I was dying, and I had these five-page monologues. So when I had her, I knew I was going to take a big chunk of time off. And I’ve never starred in anything again.”
Gwyneth won one Best Actress Oscar, one Primetime Emmy, and was nominated for two Golden Globe awards, one of which was for Proof. So it’s not like her film career was a bust. But it’s probably for the best that she’s retiring. Awards or not, we can all agree she really wasn’t any good at acting like she knew who her co-stars were.
But onto things Gwyneth does like. Dakota Johnson has been dating Gwyneth’s ex-husband Chris Martin. Gwyneth says it takes a lot of work to get along with your ex-husband and his girlfriend. But apparently it’s pretty easy for Gwyneth to like Dakota. Gwyneth has invited Dakota to Thanksgiving dinner, and shown up at Dakota’s birthday party. Gwyneth’s love for Dakota is as real as the jade she uses to…well, you know.
“I can see how it would seem weird because it’s sort of unconventional. But I think, in this case, just having passed through it iteratively, I just adore her. I always start to think of the ampersand sign – what else can you bring in, instead of being resistant to or being made insecure by? There’s so much juice in leaning in to something like that.”
And speaking on Gwyneth doing the work, she also talked about her role in the #MeToo take-down of Harvey Weinstein in 2017. It has been said that Gwyneth played a key role in exposing Harvey’s ass to the world. Even though Harvey is currently on trial, Gwyneth says there’s still a lot of work to be done to make sure harassment doesn’t keep happening. Although Gwyneth also believes she really doesn’t have to worry about that, because she’s Gwyneth Paltrow.
“It’s almost like it was the accumulation of so many years of this happening – and not to say that it doesn’t happen anymore because it still does, especially in companies where women don’t have a platform and there’s still a lot of fear and hierarchy and intimidation. There’s still so much inequity all over the place. It sounds funny to say, but I’m sort of less familiar with it in the entertainment world. Also, I think I’ve reached the status in that world where no one’s going to fuck with me.”
Pic: Zoey Grossman/Harper’s Bazaar