From the Archives: Gwyneth Paltrow

"I thought I would do it and have some success at it but I didn't think it would be like this," Gwyneth Paltrow says of where her acting career has gone. "It's a little bit crazy for me," she laughs. "But it's where I am." The laugh is tinged with more than a hint of melancholy and weariness. Sometimes being the focus of so much attention can get her down. "Some days I feel really, um, I don't know, I feel like my focus is wrong or I've made some choices that have affected me badly but I just see it as a learning process. It's weird that I do it in front of the whole world, but I just do the best I can."

Paltrow is only 25. She's spent most of those years being an appendage to someone else. As in "daughter of television producer Bruce Paltrow and actress Blythe Danner." As in "Brad Pitt's girlfriend." But no longer is she living in anyone's shadow. Though currently seeing actor Ben Affleck, she is not labelled as "Ben Affleck's girlfriend." This spotlight on her independence may refocus the perspective of those who dismissed her acting career as a by-product of her connections.

Let's rewind. Family friend Steven Spielberg may have done her a favor by casting her as Wendy in Hook, but it was Paltrow and Paltrow alone who walked away with writer-director Steve Kloves' underrated Flesh and Bone. As the morally bankrupt Ginnie, she stole scenes from costars James Caan, Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan. Paltrow bided her time in smallish roles in films such as Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, Moonlight and Valentino and Seven, where she and Pitt transferred their onscreen relationship off the set. She accepted a thankless part in The Pallbearer opposite David Schwimmer in order to play the titular character in Emma. It was a breakthrough performance that showcased her elegance, style and effortless comic touch. Hollywood took full notice. Paltrow could do both grunge and glamour and became not only a critics' darling but an object of affection for designers as well. Calvin Klein adored her -- so did Dolce & Gabbana, Richard Tyler and Tom Ford of Gucci.

And she continued making movies: Hard Eight, Great Expectations, Hush, A Perfect Murder, Sliding Doors. Her latest, Shakespeare in Love, is already generating Oscar buzz and garnering Paltrow the best reviews of her career. Cast as an aristocrat who inspires William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) to script Romeo and Juliet, Paltrow not only looks spectacularly luminous in Sandy Powell's drop-dead gorgeous costumes but makes for a convincing boy as well (she must disguise herself as a man for women were forbidden to take the stage). Paltrow was a bit apprehensive about the challenges the role posed. "I just thought I don't know how to make this work," she explains. "But the good thing was I'm not trying to fool the audience that I'm a boy. They're all complicit with me, they all know I'm a girl so I just had to worry about making it believable enough so that the other guys in the movie would think I was a young boy."

To facilitate her portrayal, Paltrow did exercises to lower her voice and positioned a little bag in her tights to simulate a man's center of gravity. "It changes the whole thing," she marvels. "All of a sudden you have this thing between your legs and it changes the way you walk, the way you sit, it changes everything." It also changed the way her male costars treated her. "When I was playing the boy, all the boys were very jocular with me. It was very boy energy," Paltrow notes, a smile of amusement tugging at her mouth. "When I came in with the long blond hair, everybody treated me like a little bird. When I was a boy, they were knocking me around." Though beau Affleck costars in the film as an arrogant actor, he and Paltrow barely shared an exchange onscreen. Most of her scenes involved Fiennes whom she praises for "his kindness and gentility. Such a good, hard worker, too. I just adored him. He's a very, very special person."

The day is winding down and Paltrow is clearly feeling the effect of having talked to too many interviewers who, no doubt, have asked her the same questions over and over again. Yet she maintains an aura of politeness, of refinement, of accomodation. Paltrow is blessed with poise and class but not with the snobbery that usually accompanies those traits. When I see her after the press junket is over, she is more relaxed. Her male costars -- Tom Wilkinson, Geoffrey Rush, Colin Firth, and Fiennes -- cluster around her, obviously enjoying her company. She and Fiennes share a laugh, she cracks a joke about the elevators that just won't arrive ("Before my next birthday, please."), and leads the brigade down the stairs so they may stop by a local bar and get drinks.