The actor Gwyneth Paltrow has said she was fired from a film due to media interest in her divorce from Chris Martin in 2014.
Speaking on Amy Poehler’s podcast, Good Hang, Paltrow blamed negative headlines surrounding the separation – which the couple called “conscious uncoupling” in their announcement – for her losing a role she had been scheduled to play soon afterwards.
“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,” Paltrow said. “I think the distributor was like, ‘This might be too hot to touch.’”
Paltrow then agreed with Poehler’s suggestion the film company’s thinking was “we don’t need the heat”.
“So that was great!” Paltrow continued. “Cause I was getting a divorce, and then I got fired off. It was so awesome.”
Paltrow and the Coldplay frontman announced their split in 2014, after 11 years of marriage, in a long post on her Goop website, titled Conscious Uncoupling, explaining that “we have always conducted our relationship privately, and we hope that as we consciously uncouple and co-parent, we will be able to continue in the same manner.”
The phrase was widely mocked at the time, but Paltrow told Poehler she believes it was the mindfulness of her and Martin’s approach to divorce that was really the cause of the backlash.
“Say you had had a really nasty divorce, or your parents had had a really nasty divorce,” Paltrow said. “And then you hear this idea that like, it doesn’t have to be done this way. I think the implicit learning is like, ‘Oh, fuck. Like, they’re saying I did something wrong.’”
She continued, “That makes sense to me, like, ‘Oh no, is the inference that I mess someone up?’ Like, that’s not a nice thing to contemplate. So I do understand why it was so personal for people.”
Paltrow is now promoting Marty Supreme, in which she plays a fading star who has an affair with Timothée Chalamet’s ping-pong hustler. The role marks her return to movies after a 10-year break, in which she only made small appearances in Marvel movies.
Writing in Vogue in 2022, Paltrow reflected on the aftermath of her separation statement by saying she was surprised by its intensity.
“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. “Frankly, the intensity of the response saw me bury my head in the sand deeper than I ever had in my very public life.”
The following year, in a 2023 Instagram Q&A, the actor reclaimed the phrase and said she was proud of advocating for a positive and compassionate approach to separation.
“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.”
