A celebrity practises her Gwyneth-ness
It’s all easy, except when it’s not.
Gwyneth Paltrow — looking every ounce the patrician goddess in Toronto the other day — struggled palpably for a moment when lobbed a question about a product item in the new beauty line for which she serves as “creative director.”
“Why do you love cream blush so much?” an Elle editor asked during a formal Q&A in the Bloor St. flagship of Holt Renfrew where, up until then, the Oscar-winning actress had been deftly taking softballs about her all-natural Juice Beauty collection.
“Well . . . um . . . ” Paltrow trailed off in a beautiful ellipsis. The audience leaned in.
Suddenly as contemplative and as pinched as some of the finest characters she’s taken on — Margot Tenenbaum moping in a bathtub, Sylvia Plath loping around her kitchen — she was at a loss for words.
“Surely,” she asked, half-laughing, “there’s something more important going in the world right now?”
“You just looked so serious when you asked me that question!” Paltrow went on, half-apologizing.
In a lifetime of covering celebrities, it was one of the most naked moments I’d witnessed.
Id over ego. The extreme multitasker and guruess of taste — whose latest cookbook is titled It’s All Easy, which followed her last one, It’s All Good — won me over in that one unscripted scene.
It also confirmed that Paltrow, so often a convenient celebrity pinata, is nothing if not in on the joke.
“I’m old enough to remember when Gwyneth Paltrow used to be an actress,” quipped one friend at a smaller reception held for the beauty inside the Holt’s Café just before.
They were referring to the starlet’s emergence in the 1990s, when she was known mainly as “Brad Pitt’s girlfriend” or “Blythe Danner’s daughter.”
Back then — powered by performances in movies such as Emma and Sliding Doors — she was every bit the “It Girl,” complete with real chops, a wistful mien and a Streeplike ear for accents.
This was, of course, way before she birthed Goop and, in the process, pioneered a whole new category in celebrity-ville.
With bottled juices going around at the reception, as well as itty-bitty Goopy bites such as “Kumato tomatoes, edamame and basil,” Paltrow arrived, wearing head-to-toe pink (a few shades less pink than the nowfamous Ralph Lauren dress she donned when she nabbed her Academy Award for Shakespeare in Love all those years ago).
One has perhaps not lived until one has been at a party at which Gwyneth insouciantly tosses off terms such as “wellness vertical” and “angel investor.”
To underscore the A-list-ness of the celebrity arrival was Hilary Weston — the First Lady of Holt Renfrew and the most enduring of benefactors in Toronto — who was personally hosting the reception for Paltrow.
It’s not every event at Holt’s — few, indeed — that bring out both Mr. and Mrs. Weston. During her own remarks, the latter praised Paltrow for her “innovation,” all the while welcoming both her and Karen Behnke, the founder of Juice Beauty, to the store.
(By the way, speaking of consciously non-uncoupling, Mrs. Weston said she is, amazingly, celebrating her 50th anniversary with husband Galen this month.)
Watching Paltrow up close this day, I was reminded how much modern boldface history is wound up in her. Looking as lithe and as toned as she was on Valentino’s yacht for her 30th birthday more than a decade back, she’s been a Rorschach test for so long, hasn’t she?
From naming her first child Apple — a pioneer of odd celebrity kidname-giving — to, yes, her let’s-playnice divorce from Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, it came flooding back, all the essential Gwynethness: her romantic hopscotch from Pitt to Affleck; her falling-out with Winona Ryder; her can’t-hurt “godfather” Steven Spielberg; her chumminess with Beyoncé and Jay Z; her funny, bulky turn in Shallow Hal; her Pepper Potts phase; the lifestyle genius who now comes straight to your inbox.
There, too, is the gal, who — at least, according to her BFF, Mario Batali, with whom she tooled around Spain for a PBS series — “eats like a truck driver” and is someone he once watched “eat an entire pan of paella as big as a manhole cover.”
Famously, Paltrow is the woman who, within two weeks, some years back, was named both the “Most Hated Celebrity” by Star and the “World’s Most Beautiful Woman” by People. To which the purportedly perfect Paltrow told Howard Stern, in an interview not long back, “I feel like I’m this cartoon character” and the commentary, “mostly projection . . . it’s not about me.”
Oh, but what a beautiful, aspirational cartoon. Gwyneth, in my mind — and as she showed in Toronto — has never strived to be anything but Gwyneth.