Gwyneth Paltrow is opening about how she lost her passion for acting. The Oscar-winning actress was just 26 when she realized she didn't "love acting that much as it turns out." In an interview with SiriusXM’s "Quarantined with Bruce," the Hollywood star revealed why.
"I sort of felt like, well, now who am I supposed to be? Like, what am I, what am I driving towards?" she said of the days following her Oscar win for "Shakespeare in Love," according to People. Paltrow added that "part of the shine of acting wore off" due to the "intense public scrutiny" that came with being an emerging star.
"Being a kid who's like living every breakup on every headline, like being criticized for everything you do say and wear," she said. "And also, it's so transitory, you're always all over. It's hard to plant roots. Like I'm such a homebody, you know me, I like to be with my old friends and cook and squeeze my kids. Like I don't want to be alone in a hotel room in Budapest for six weeks. Like, it's just not who I am."
Working with Harvey Weinstein, who was president of Miramax for several years and who Paltrow and many other women have accused of sexual harassment, further dampened her spirits.
"If you compound those things with the fact that like, you know, to be totally candid, I had a really rough boss for most of my movie career at Miramax," she said, hinting of her time with Weinstein. "Like, so you take all those things [and] you're like, ‘I don't know if this is really my calling.'"
Paltrow added that she eventually reached the point where she wasn't sure if acting was something she wanted to pursue.
"So you're like, 'I don't know if this is really my calling,' she said. "So I'm still trying to parse out what came from what, and you know, where, how my life changed course. But I think that stew is a big piece of it."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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