Honesty is the best policy, right? Gwyneth Paltrow revealed in a new interview with Harper’s Bazaar that her late father, Bruce Paltrow, told her she was becoming an “a–hole” because of her fame.
“I remember when I was maybe 27 years old and kind of at the height of my movie stardom — it was around the time of [my 1999 Best Actress Oscar for Shakespeare in Love] and this and that,” the actress, 44, recounted in the magazine’s November cover story. “I think I was very much believing my own hype, which how could you not?”
Gwyneth continued, “I was sitting with my dad, feeling great about my life and everything that was happening, and he was like, ‘You know, you’re getting a little weird … You’re kind of an a–hole.’ And I was like, ‘What the hell?’ I was totally devastated.”
Looking back nearly two decades later, the Iron Man 3 actress says she took her dad’s harsh advice to heart and changed her actions.
“It turned out to be basically the best thing that ever happened to me,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. “It’s the difference between someone who loves you more than anything in the world giving you criticism and getting it from some bitter stranger on the internet. What my dad said to me was the kind of criticism where I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I’m on the wrong track.’ I’m so grateful for him doing that. He was such a no-nonsense guy in that sense.”
Bruce, who was married to actress Blythe Danner and was also dad of screenwriter Jake Paltrow, died from complications of oral cancer and pneumonia in October 2002. Gwyneth’s ex-husband, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, dedicated his band’s 2005 hit “Fix You” to her as a tribute to her late father.
Gwyneth also opened up about her children, daughter Apple, 12, and son Moses, 10, in the November issue of Harper’s Bazaar, discussing the struggles they sometimes face living in their parents’ spotlight.
“I’ve borne these two kids into a particularly strange circumstance,” she explained. “They are going to have to fend off a lot and protect themselves from a lot of projections and prejudice about who they are, coming from the family that they come from.”
