During a recent appearance on Amy Poehler’s podcast, Gwyneth Paltrow said that her split from Coldplay singer-songwriter Chris Martin cost her a movie role.
“I was supposed to do a movie at one point, and it was like right after the conscious uncoupling thing with Chris, and there was a lot of harsh stuff in the press,” she said on an episode of the Good Hang with Amy Poehler podcast. “I think the distributor was like, ‘This is too hot to touch.’” Paltrow met Martin in 2002, and they married the following year. They welcomed two children together, one son and one daughter, but announced their separation in 2014 and finalized the divorce in 2015.
At the time of their separation, the couple described their divorce as a“conscious uncoupling,” making it clear that it was an amicable decision. “So that was great, because I was getting a divorce and then I got fired,” she sarcastically added of the firing. “So it was awesome.”
The choice to use the term “conscious uncoupling” provoked some strong reactions at the time, and looking back, Paltrow understands why some people reacted the way they did. “Say you had had a really nasty divorce, or your parents had had a really nasty divorce. And then you hear this idea that like, it doesn't have to be done this way,” she said. “I think the implicit learning is like, 'Oh, fuck. Like, they're saying I did something wrong.'”
Paltrow stressed, though, that she never intended to suggest that others divorced the wrong way, but she said that it made “sense” that some took it personally. “That makes sense to me, like, 'Oh no, is the inference that I mess someone up,’” she said. “Like, that's not a nice thing to contemplate. So I do understand why it was so personal for people.”
During the podcast, Poehler also pointed out that Paltrow filmed as many as 15 films in the space of just five years. “That’s psycho,” replied Paltrow, who took a step back from acting for some time to focus on raising her children. “I mean, babe. That’s problematic. Probably why I quit for ten years afterwards. I was like, ‘No.’”
Outside of her appearances as Pepper Potts in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which started in 2008 in Iron Man, Paltrow hasn’t starred in a major project since 2015’s Mortdecai. She did, however, make a big return last year with her role in Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme.