DURING a seven-year break from the big screen, Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow reinvented herself as a wellness guru.
But now the Hollywood star is back in what could be her steamiest role ever — and it has clearly rubbed off on her.
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Gwyneth Paltrow in New York this month promoting her new filmCredit: Splash
Gwyneth with co-star Timothee Chalamet at the Marty Supreme New York premiereCredit: Splash
She appears alongside 30-year-old Timothee Chalamet in sports comedy-drama Marty Supreme — and the movie sees the pair share plenty of X-rated moments together.
Asked how she would spend her final days if given only a month to live, Gwyneth, 53, says with a laugh: “I’d have a lot of sex. A lot.”
Of her return to movies — and saucy scenes with in-demand actor Timothee – she adds: “I did enjoy it. It was really, really fun . . . I mean, there’s a lot of making out and a lot of, you know, there’s a few sex scenes and that kind of thing.”
It was Gwyneth’s daughter Apple, 21, who urged her to take on the role with Timothee, who has also starred in Wonka and played Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown.
He has twice been nominated for an Oscar, and it could be a case of “third time lucky” for Marty Supreme.
The drama, set in New York City during the 1950s, was inspired by the real-life tale of table tennis star Marty Reisman, who went to extreme lengths to become the greatest player of his generation.
‘Burnt out’
Gwyneth plays a movie siren who Timothee’s character is determined to seduce — and she says Apple’s reward for encouraging her to take the part was “a lot” of sex on screen.
There was so much bedroom action, in fact, that when Gwyneth took her son Moses, 19, to the premiere, he struggled to watch.
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On US TV’s Late Night With Seth Meyers, she said with a laugh: “He was like this [covering his eyes] the whole time.
“He’s not into that.
“I did warn him.”
Gwyneth also told how being pregnant with daughter Apple actually encouraged her to slow down.
On her Goop podcast, she said: “The last time I was in a movie, where I was in every scene of the movie, I was pregnant with Apple.
“It was called Proof.
“It was an adaptation of a play that I did in London, actually. And when I had her, I just thought, ‘OK, I need to downshift’.
“I was burnt out and I was running all over the world having a great time, but I needed to slow down.
“Then I had my son and I just thought . . . I didn’t want to go back to it [movie-making] in the same way.
“When you are doing a film, you’re away from home a lot. And even if you’re shooting in the same city where you live, you leave before the babies are awake and you come home when they are asleep.
“It’s not a regular work day.
“It was very hard to think about doing that while having kids.
“So I did a few supporting parts here or there where I could.
“When I did Iron Man 1, it was, like, three days a week, it felt more manageable — but very selectively.
Gwyneth snogs Timothee in a scene from the new movieCredit: AP
Gwyneth plays a screen siren in Marty SupremeCredit: Alamy
“And then they all left me and went to college.”
Gwyneth admits she has spent a lot of time thinking about how to make the most of her life now her children — who she had with her first husband, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin — have flown the nest.
And she has taken inspiration from her second husband, producer Brad Falchuk, who has just made a Netflix show called Famous Last Words.
Gwyneth says: “He is interviewing these amazing people — and they know it will be their last ever interview and it doesn’t air until they die.
“I’m obsessed with this show and every time he comes home from doing it, he says everybody says the same thing . . . more time with the people they loved, more time with their kids.
“Not one of them has said, you know, ‘I wish I had published that book’, or ‘I wish I had won that award’. No, no, it’s all about, ‘I wish I had slowed down. I wish I had just savoured time with the people I love. I wish I hadn’t gone on that trip that made me miss my kid’s play’, stuff like that.”
Gwyneth with ex-husband, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, in 2003Credit: Rex Features
Gwyneth with her Best Actress Oscar for Shakespeare In Love, 1998Credit: AFP – Getty
It was precisely for this reason that Gwyneth decided to take a much-needed break from Hollywood.
Following a glittering acting career that saw her in box office hits including Seven (1995), Sliding Doors (1998), and A Perfect Murder (1998), she went on to win an Academy Award for her role as Viola de Lesseps in the historical romance Shakespeare In Love (1998).
Gwyneth also starred in Shallow Hal (2001) and made her West End debut in the David Auburn play Proof (2002).
Although she didn’t exactly slow down during her hiatus, taking her Goop wellness concept from a kitchen table newsletter to a lucrative ecommerce powerhouse, Gwyneth believes that not being constantly on the road made her a better parent.
And while film critics are raving about her return to acting, Gwyneth says she is more determined than ever not to let work overwhelm her.
‘Beautiful souls’
“I love to just sort of fritter away the day . . . you know, like on a Sunday, just potter around and I’ll go on Pinterest,” she says.
“I’ll think, ‘What was that thing that I wanted to look up?’ or ‘What was that Swedish vase place that I found?’, you know?
“And then I’ll make some food and read a book — and I just love just frittering when it’s only one day.
“If I’m trying to do two things at the same time, I kind of fall apart so I’ve become pretty rigorous about my time in the morning — for me to meditate and exercise and shower with no phone around.
“I do emails in the morning when I wake up with coffee and then I put my phone down for probably 90 minutes to two hours to meditate and to do all the stuff.”
For years, Gwyneth has sworn by a strict anti-inflammatory diet, avoiding sugar, dairy and gluten.
But the health guru admits she has now relaxed her regime and treats herself to “a drink” and a “hot fudge sundae” once in a while.
Gwyneth is determined to keep her slower pace of life, and not to get sucked back into a superficial world where you need constant validation for your work.
I love to just sort of fritter away the day. . . you know, like, on a Sunday I’ll go on Pinterest and potter around and then I’ll make some food nand read a book
Gwyneth Paltrow
She says: “We have to be careful, because then we get really hard-wired to do and to get the praise.
“Like, you work so hard and you’re doing it and it’s so great.
“And that starts to feel like part of our identity and to feel really good.
“So then we start to question, ‘Well, what if I wasn’t doing well and I wasn’t successful, or if I wasn’t impressive, then what’s left?’
“And, ‘Am I worth anything?’ which has also been an interesting thing around aging to reckon with — that for so much of our lives, as women, the way we look, our sexuality, our reproductive viability is such a part of our identity in this ego sense.
“We don’t realise that underneath, we are beautiful souls and we don’t need to do anything.
“We just need to ‘be’. So this has been really this unwinding that I’ve been trying to work on.
“It started when I was 40, so this has been an evolving process.
“But now when I notice myself doing too much, I know that there’s just stuff that I don’t want to be feeling.
“And I also have a husband who’s like, ‘What’s going on here?’.”
For Gwyneth this is her perfect time of the year.
She says: “What I do love is every Christmas, that week between Christmas and New Year.
“There’s that real old-school holiday, where nobody’s working.
“I close the whole company in kind of a European style and let everybody have the same time off, because it’s the only way you can really stop.”