How Judaism Helped Gwyneth Paltrow
By
Ivor Davis
For actress Gwyneth Paltrow, winning her first Oscar in March 1999 for
"Shakespeare in Love" was a dream come true. But for the beautiful 27-year-old
superstar, it was also something of a nightmare.
Recently, the star
of "The Talented Mr. Ripley" - now playing at theaters nationwide
While
the actress hasn't kept it a secret, neither has she talked a great deal
about growing up half-Jewish: Her father, producer-director Bruce Paltrow,
is Jewish. (Her mother, actress Blythe Danner, isn't Jewish.) Her father's
Judaism isn't of a common garden variety. "I come from a real rabbinical
dynasty," Paltrow proudly declares, "and it couldn't help but have fashioned
my life. It's given me so much inner peace and inner strength." The Paltrowitch
family tree goes back to 17th-century Russia. In fact, Paltrow can count
a whopping 33 rabbis among her ancestors. Her great-great-great grandfather
was Rabbi Tsvi Paltrowitch, the Gaon of Nitzy-Novgorod in South West Russia.
His three sons, all rabbis, emigrated from Russia in the l9th century.
One Simcha Paltrowitch served as rabbi in Buffalo, New York from l890
to l914. Another son emigrated to England and founded the Old Central
Synagogue in Leeds.
Rabbi Nachum Paltrowich, of the Leeds Paltrowitch's, is an enthusaistic genealogist, and he reports that Gynweth Paltrow is a direct descendant of Rabbi David Ben Samuel Ha-Levi, a famous 17th-century authority on Jewish law. The movie star recently showed up at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills looking thoroughly unPaltrow-like and more like a friendly, down-to-earth Jewish girl. You had to look twice to make sure it really was her. Gone is the shoulder-length golden blonde, Grace Kelly-like hair. Instead, her locks are dark brown (for her role in "Bounce," a movie she has just finished shooting with her on-again-off-again boyfriend Ben Affleck.)
"I think the director of 'Bounce' was sick of the whole Blonde Gwyneth person. And so was I," she confesses.
Wearing virtually no makeup, Paltrow nevertheless looked tremendously elegant in an ankle-length black leather skirt and matching top, set off with dazzling diamond earrings which are believed to be a gift from Affleck. Following the breakup of her engagement to Brad Pitt, (who isn't Jewish) Paltrow's life had begun to settle down when along came Oscar and the paparazzi went on red alert.
"I became a prisoner in my house because after a while I just didn't want to go out," she recalls. "One day, I ran out of gas, and there are [published] pictures of me walking down the street with a gas can looking for the nearest service station. The paparazzi didn't have the decency to give me a ride. They just wanted those demeaning pictures. I wanted to go hide somewhere. I felt I couldn't sustain all of the energy that comes with all that attention."
The whole media obsession seems to have been exacerbated by the fact that her acceptance speech became fodder for late night comedians. Not since Sally Field's "You love me, you really love me" acceptance speech for "Norma Rae" in l979, had so many had so much fun with so little.
At Oscar time, Paltrow's father was ill, her much beloved grandfather was dying, (he has since died, and she still can't mention his name without tearing), and her brother, Jake, (who, according to the London Jewish Chronicle had a traditional Bar Mitzvah) was also having his own health problems. Not surprisingly, the actress broke down in front of the world's largest audience.
"The nightmare about that evening was that I had one of the most personal moments of my life in front of the whole world. I felt so terribly exposed," she confesses. "Of course, I'd like to go back and change some things, but that's impossible. It's there for posterity."
Paltrow countered in the only way she knew how by turning inward and taking stock of her life and career and drawing on her beliefs and background. But she doesn't like to deal with these questions in the formula celebrity interview way.
"Judaism is something you can't brush off with a quick answer," she explains. "It's part of who I am and what I've become. It's something you need to sit down and talk about for a long time to really let you understand how much it meant to me in shaping my life."
Her strong family background meant she was able to get lots of support from her parents as she was going through a real re-evaluation of the direction she saw her life taking.
"What happened to me made me see some of the emptiness in everything I had achieved. It's wonderful, and I appreciate it, but nothing you can buy, nothing you can do, achieve or win, no boy, no relationship, will help you retain contentedness." Paltrow plunged back into work, determined, she says, not to let the award affect the way her career would lead her.
"I have been working so hard not to let it make any changes in my life. I still only accept roles if I want to do them, as an artist, not because they are a potential award-winning role."
One of those roles
is Marge Sherwood, the beautiful and wealthy girlfriend of Dickie Greenleaf
(played by English actor Jude Law), in "The Talented Mr. Ripley." "I liked
Marge, she was very sweet," Paltrow says. "But I didn't understand how
deep she was and how layered it all was until I got there and started
doing the film. I thought she was lighter. I didn't realize she was so
deep and warm and complicated, which is a testament to my stupidity."
And to the fact that director Anthony Minghella made her promise not to
read the Patricia Highsmith novel on which the film is based.
The fascinating story, set in 1950's Italy, tells the tale of Tom Ripley (Matt Damon), who is asked by a millionaire shipbuilder to persuade his playboy son Dickie (Jude Law) to come home. Ripley becomes so fascinated by the lavish lifestyle of Dickie and Marge that he goes to extraordinary and disturbing lengths to become just like them.
The film is gorgeously shot at some of Italy's most glorious locales, and Paltrow and Law are as golden a couple as anything Scott Fitzgerald conjured up. Minghella says he wrote the screenplay knowing full well who he wanted to play Marge.
"She was the first person I cast. The character of Marge in the film -- womanly, trusting, compassionate, a rebel in her own way-- has as much to do with Gywneth herself as it has to do with Patricia Highsmith's Marge."
"Our movie is about a very lonely, desperate person who wants to be loved and will do anything to get that love," Paltrow says. "That's a universal trait--that people want to get out of their own lives and inhabit someone else's."
But surely Paltrow never wanted to exchange her life for another's?
"I never wished I had someone else's life. I never wanted to be someone else, but there were many times when I felt really uncomfortable in my own skin.
"I may have had celebrity quite quickly," she explained, "but I've had to work so hard to get respect and recognition. It's a bit like Nicole Kidman. She is one of the greatest actresses of her generation, but she was never mentioned without reference to her being Tom Cruise's wife. Until very recently, I was always somebody's daughter or somebody's girlfriend."
British born writer Ivor Davis, who has been a foreign correspondent in
the United States for the Times of London and the London Express for more
than 20 years, writes a weekly entertainment column for the New York Times
Syndicate.
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