Gwyneth Paltrow opened up about how her split from Coldplay’s Chris Martin actually hurt her acting career. She revealed that the timing of her “conscious uncoupling” announcement drew negative press, prompting movie distributors to hesitate to back her next project. What she intended as a graceful breakup turned out to pierce her professional life harder than expected.
Gwyneth Paltrow shares how she lost a role because of Chris Martin divorce
On Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast, Paltrow opened up about how her split from Martin threw a wrench in her career. The actress-businesswoman was lined up for a movie right after the split, and she confessed that the press was brutal. Paltrow explained that the film’s distributor eventually backed out due to the media frenzy surrounding her divorce.
“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 continued, “I think the distributor was like, ‘This is too hot to touch'” (via Complex).
Paltrow and Martin met in 2002, married in 2003, and had two kids before announcing their split in 2014 and finalizing their divorce in 2015. They called it a “conscious uncoupling,” trying to keep things civil. The 53-year-old pointed out the irony of being praised for handling her personal life gracefully while simultaneously losing a movie gig. “So that was great, because I was getting a divorce and then I got fired,” she said with a touch of sarcasm.
Looking back on how people reacted to the term “conscious uncoupling,” Paltrow admitted it got misunderstood. “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… the implicit learning is like, ‘Oh, f**k. Like, they’re saying I did something wrong,” she said. Paltrow also made it clear that she never meant to judge anyone’s split, but she understood why it was “personal” to some people.
Originally reported by Rishabh Shandilya on Mandatory.
