Gwyneth Paltrow, 53, revealed that her early career decisions led to her recent near-decade absence from Hollywood. Between 1995 and 2000, Paltrow starred in 15 movies, averaging three per year.
On a Tuesday episode of Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast, Poehler rifled off Paltrow’s staggering resume, listing off some of the biggest hits from that era.
“That’s psycho,” said Paltrow in response. “It’s probably why I quit for 10 years afterwards.”
Paltrow quickly became a Hollywood heartthrob and A-list star through numerous iconic roles in the ‘90s, including Sliding Doors, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Shakespeare in Love, for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress.
Paltrow has acted in nearly 50 movies in her three-decade career, some of which she didn’t even know she was in.
In a 2019 interview with director Jon Favreau, Paltrow was visibly surprised to hear she had starred in the 2017 blockbuster Spider-Man: Homecoming alongside Favreau. Two years later, after reprising her role of Pepper Potts in Avengers: Endgame, the A-list actress stepped away from the silver screen, citing burnout.
“I didn’t feel like I knew myself and had the agency to say no,” Paltrow explained. “I felt like I better just keep going and going and going. I didn’t bring a lot of strategy to it.”
For six years, she refused to take on a new film—until director Josh Safdie, 41, wrote a character for his 2025 Ping-Pong drama, Marty Supreme, with her in mind.
In Marty Supreme, Paltrow plays a once-acclaimed theater actress attempting to make a career comeback.
“I scheduled it so that the first thing that we shot was her character acting on stage for the first time in 25 years,” Safdie told Poehler during the opening segment of Good Hang. “And she turned to me, she’s like, ‘I hope I remember how to do this.’”
Paltrow, now in her 46th film, is making a comeback of her own.
“Now I’m like the venerable old [actress],” said Paltrow. “I did this interview with Jacob Elordi the other day, and he was like ‘you’ve done this and this,’ and I’m like f---, I’m old as hell.”
