The actor Gwyneth Paltrow accused of selling out: “Of course it’s for money and status”
No matter how much they love and respect their craft, actors still have bills to pay, which means most of them will accept at least a handful of highly-paid roles that hardly stretch their dramatic chops. Gwyneth Paltrow has, but still felt compelled to accuse one of her peers of selling out.
Of course, there’s a combination of irony and hypocrisy in the Academy Award winner looking down on a contemporary for choosing money and status over artistic fulfilment when she was born with both in abundance. After all, she’s the daughter of a nine-time Emmy-nominated filmmaker and a Tony-winning actor who calls Steven Spielberg her godfather, so she didn’t need to scratch and claw her way to the top.
Even nepo babies have to prove themselves, though, and Paltrow did just that. After some early eye-catching roles in Flesh and Bone, Seven, Hard Eight, and Emma, she claimed a ‘Best Actress’ Oscar for Shakespeare in Love at the age of only 26, adding The Talented Mr Ripley and The Royal Tenenbaums to an increasingly impressive filmography.
However, by the end of the 2000s, she was basically semi-retired. Focusing on her extracurricular activities, most notably the vagina-scented candle merchants and questionably holistic peddlers, Goop, Paltrow has spent the better part of the last two decades appearing in almost nothing but Marvel movies, and she still has no idea how many of them she was in.
It’s a rite of passage for every fast-rising new face in Hollywood to tick off several genre boxes as they climb the ladder, and Paltrow was no different: she worked with several acclaimed auteurs, headlined a literary adaptation, popped up in a few rom-coms, and played a real-life figure in a biopic.
And yet, for whatever reason, when another aspiring A-lister did much the same thing, who also won a ‘Best Actress’ Oscar in their 20s, she wasn’t impressed. “Even actresses that you really admire, like Reese Witherspoon, you think, another romantic comedy? You know,” she sighed to The Guardian.
“You see her in something like Walk the Line and think, ‘God, you’re so great,'” she continued. “And then you think, ‘Why is she doing these stupid romantic comedies?’ But, of course, it’s for money and status. I just think, wouldn’t it be great if all of those movies people went to see were about real women?”
That’s big talk from the star of Shallow Hal, a rom-com that she’s since openly denigrated and virtually disowned, never mind Sliding Doors, Bounce, and View from the Top, only one of which is remembered as being anything other than shite. How dare that Reese Witherspoon make rom-coms when she’s won an Oscar, who on earth would ever consider doing such a thing, Gwyneth Paltrow?
These comments came before she signed what you can only assume was a lucrative contract to play Pepper Potts opposite Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark in no less than seven big-budget comic book adaptations, so as more time passed, the more ridiculous her criticisms became. At least Witherspoon hasn’t thrown any of her rom-coms under the bus, unlike some people.
