Gwyneth Paltrow Says Her Oscar ‘Works Perfectly’ as a Doorstop

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | October 10, 2023 |

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | October 10, 2023 |

We love to poke fun at Ms. Paltrow around here, but it’s all in good fun, I assure you. Remember when she showed us her fridge, and it was actually pretty boring? Well, don’t worry, because she recently did a “73 Questions” video with Vogue, and it was not boring.

(By the way, who is the guy recording these videos and asking these questions? The video lists the director as Joe Sabia, so maybe him, but this guy is trying really hard with these jokes and I don’t know if they’re landing. Or maybe they directed Paltrow to be as awkward as possible because they certainly aren’t landing with her. When she welcomed him to her garden he went, “Welcome to me,” and she let out that little fake giggle you do when your weird uncle says something like, “My, how you’ve grown.”)

As Paltrow led her interviewer out of her Hamptons garden, he asked her, “What’s your greatest vice?” and her answer, “My one alcoholic drink a week,” made me want to gouge my eyes out with a spoon. To “What’s your biggest virtue?” she responded, “Everything else.” That’s the Gwyneth we know and love!

They continued to walk the property, and while Gwyneth sang her favorite Coldplay song, “Life is for Living,” which she didn’t remember most of the words of, the interviewer remarked, “What a beautiful voice, that was incredible! And…what a beautiful Academy award!” The camera panned to the ground, where her 1999 Best Actress Oscar Award for her role in Shakespeare in Love was propping open the gate.

“My doorstop! Works perfectly!” she exclaimed.

The format of this video—walking through a beautiful property and asking rapid-fire questions—didn’t allow for pausing on the Oscar doorstop, but I can, and I will.

This is Gwyneth at her most Gwyneth. She recently said she doesn’t miss acting and maybe doesn’t care to do it anymore—later in this video she reconfirmed that—so, naturally, she’d use her Oscar as a doorstop. She will never be better than she was in Shakespeare in Love, so one would think she might want to preserve the award as a relic, but the only thing Gwyneth Paltrow preserves is fruit and veg. She just doesn’t care! She is a wandering cloud. She uses words like “wellness” and “longevity” in all sincerity. She will probably never watch this video or read any of the headlines about it. I doubt she even uses the internet beyond when her Goop people tell her to.

I’ll leave you with this because I think it’s hinting that there might be some soul in there after all: when asked her favorite line from any of the roles she’s played, she answered that it was when Margot in The Royal Tennenbaums said, “You probably don’t even know my middle name.”