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Gwyneth Paltrow has claimed she was fired from an acting job because of the attention-grabbing headlines surrounding her divorce from Chris Martin.
The actor, 53, and the Coldplay frontman, 48, announced their split, which they famously called “conscious uncoupling,” in 2014, after nearly 11 years of marriage. Although they finalized their divorce in 2016, they have remained friends and co-parent their two children, Apple, 21, and Moses, 19.
Now, the Goop founder is looking back on getting divorced in the spotlight and how it affected her career. During Tuesday’s episode of Amy Poehler’s podcast, Good Hang, Paltrow claimed that while she was scheduled to do a movie right after her and Martin’s “conscious uncoupling,” the opportunity fell through.
“There was a lot of harsh stuff in the press, and I think the distributor was like, ‘This might be too hot to touch,’” she explained, without naming the movie.
“Interesting. They were like, ‘We don’t need the heat?’” Poehler responded, which Paltrow agreed with.
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Gwyneth Paltrow claims she was ‘fired off’ a film because of headlines about her split from Chris Martin (Getty Images)
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Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin split in 2014 (Getty Images for Entertainment I)
“So that was great!” the Marty Supreme star joked. “Cause I was getting a divorce, and then I got fired off. It was so awesome.”
When Poehler mentioned the “big reactions” to the actor’s “conscious uncoupling,” Paltrow said she understood why there was backlash.
“I think the implicit learning is like, ‘Oh, f***.’ Like, they’re saying I did something wrong, which of course was not the intention,” she explained. “The inference that I messed someone up. Like that’s not a nice thing to contemplate. So, I do understand why it was so personal for people.”
When Paltrow and Martin announced their divorce, they called it a “conscious uncoupling,” a term for mindfully and respectfully ending a relationship, with the intention of positively moving forward.
“We have always conducted our relationship privately, and we hope that as we consciously uncouple and coparent, we will be able to continue in the same manner,” the pair wrote in a 2014 blog post on Paltrow’s Goop website, titled “Conscious Uncoupling,”
In a 2022 essay for British Vogue, the Iron Man star reflected on the immense backlash surrounding her divorce statement, which she didn’t initially expect.
“The public’s surprise gave way quickly to ire and derision. A strange combination of mockery and anger that I had never seen. I was already pretty tattered from what had been a tough year,” she wrote at the time. “Frankly, the intensity of the response saw me bury my head in the sand deeper than I ever had in my very public life.”
However, in a 2023 Instagram Q&A, Paltrow said she took pride in using the “conscious uncoupling” phrase to announce her divorce.
“It makes me feel pretty proud when people come up to me on the streets and say, ‘Thank you for introducing that concept because I’ve become good friends with my ex,’” she said. “I’m very happy that we were able to play a small part in that cultural shift.”
After the divorce, Paltrow married Brad Falchuk in 2018. Meanwhile, Martin dated actor Dakota Johnson for eight years before they split up in June.