The only scene from Gwyneth Paltrow’s career she can watch: “I hate, hate hate seeing myself”
Being a famous actor can often lead to a complicated relationship with oneself. When one is in the public eye all the time and makes their money partly through how they look, it’s easy to become detached from one’s own image.
Hollywood history is littered with stories of promising stars falling into depressions over how they look and really struggling with watching themselves on the big screen. One example of the latter is Gwyneth Paltrow.
The American star has a lot of great scenes in her back catalogue. Decimating supervillains in Avengers: Endgame, confronting Matt Damon in The Talented Mr. Ripley, having her head in a box in Se7en, the list goes on. Even with all these incredible moments under her belt, Paltrow simply cannot bear to watch any of them back.
“I also really hate, hate, hate seeing myself in a movie ever,” she told a panel at the Tribeca Film Festival (via USA Today). However, she is willing to make an exception for a moment fro Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tennenbaums.
“I have a memory of my dad visiting,” she continued. “He came the day that we did a scene where I’m getting off the bus and Richie’s picking me up, and my dad was there. It was a very special day… It’s kind of like the only scene that I can watch of myself of my whole career.”
Released in 2001, The Royal Tenenbaums stars Gene Hackman as the title character, the patriarch of a family of gifted children who fail to live up to their potential in real life. When he learns he is dying, he attempts to reconcile with his kids before it’s too late. Paltrow plays Margot Tenenbaum, a once-promising playwright who now finds herself in a sham marriage with a much older man (Bill Murray). Ben Stiller and Luke Wilson play her brothers, Chas and Richie, while Anderson favourite Anjelica Houston appears as Royal’s ex-wife.
It’s interesting that Paltrow would opt for a moment from this particular film, given how much of a nightmare it was behind the scenes. Hackman was notoriously grumpy during the production, even more so than usual. The Shakespeare in Love star was inadvertently responsible, as Hackman was apparently annoyed that Wilson wouldn’t stop flirting with her on set. Yes, it is weird that they were playing brother and sister at the time, although that is pretty in-line with how Margot and Richie were portrayed in the film.
It’s clear that Paltrow’s father being present goes a long way in making this scene more palatable for her. Bruce Paltrow was a film and TV director and had Gwyneth and her brother Jake with Tony-winning actor Blythe Danner. The Royal Tenenbaums premiered to the general public in December 2001, less than one year before Bruce passed away from cancer. He had been visiting his daughter in Rome ahead of her 30th birthday. His death and the subsequent period of grief Gwyneth would go through would inspire Chris Martin of Coldplay (Patrow’s ex-husband) to write the hit song ‘Fix You’.
Actors may seem like soulless celebrities at times, but they are real people whose movies are so often intertwined with their personal lives. Gwyneth Paltrow will clearly always have a soft spot for The Royal Tenenbaums, not because of how good the film is, but because it reminds her of her dad.
