(© Scott Garfield)
Gwyneth Paltrow’s love for performing started young, she’s says. “My playground was the theater. I’d sit and watch my mother, Blythe Danner, pretend for a living. As a young girl, that’s pretty seductive.” So Paltrow began pretending as a teenager, and has been doing so steadily on stage in films for over 20 years, tackling such roles as poet Sylvia Plath, a stewardess, a superhero’s girlfriend; and, of course, Shakespeare’s muse (in Shakespeare in Love, for which she won the Academy Award).
Now, she puts herself to the test again in her new film, Country Strong, as Kelly Canter, a recently out-of-rehab country music star on the road to recovery and a comeback. And from singing and strutting to learning about doing drugs, the task was daunting. “I just didn’t know how to do so many things this character knows how to do,” she says. “I felt trepidation about being believable. I’ve never prepared so much for anything in my life.”
Learning to play the guitar even took a physical toll on the actress. “It took me so long to get my fingers to do what my brain told them to do,” she laughs. “I had bleeding fingers and cramps and shoulder problems — I pulled a muscle in my armpit — it was a disaster.” Moreover, while Paltrow had an inside track on how to command a concert stage — her husband is Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin — she points out their situations were not identical. “He’s a male in a band, which is a different formula than being a woman alone up there,” she says.
Instead, Paltrow relied on someone else for inspiration. “I watched Beyonce. She defines superstar. She has an incredible self-confidence, and not only is she so mind-bogglingly talented, but there is this abandon and fun with all this technology at the same time. It’s like a master class,” she notes. “I thought if I could just get a thimble full of what she has, maybe I can pull it off.”
Oddly enough, the darkest parts of her character were some of the most enjoyable for Paltrow to play. “I loved playing someone who was coming off her hinges. My life is so ordered, and I’m so organized. I loved playing someone who didn’t care about consequences. There was something liberating about playing somebody that was so reckless, because I’m the opposite of that.”
Paltrow proudly admits that her ordered life revolves around her two children, Apple, 6 and Moses, 4, which is why she’ll only do one film a year. “Other than that time for myself, I do everything for them — homework, bath. When I’m home, I’m 100 percent present.” Indeed, it’s that commitment to her family that has kept her off the stage, although she hopes to return someday. “My time out of my house and away from my kids is no joke. When I do my work, I want to be inspired and I want do something that they’ll be proud of.”
