Gwyneth Paltrow did not hold back when discussing intimate scenes with Timothee Chalamet in the upcoming movie Marty Supreme.
Paltrow, 52, put it bluntly: "I was like, 'Okay, great. I'm 109 years old. You're 14.'"
Paltrow and Chalamet, 29, star in the upcoming Josh Safdie-directed movie loosely based on the life of table tennis champ Martin "Marty" Reisman.
The internet was buzzing after paparazzi photos of the two actors kissing in character made the rounds in October, when they were shooting in New York.
In an interview for Vanity Fair's April cover, Paltrow divulged the first details about her character, saying she is "married to someone who is in the Ping-Pong mafia, as it were" and becomes entangled with Chalamet's Marty.
"They meet and she's had a pretty tough life, and I think he breathes life back into her, but it's kind of transactional for them both."
She also said the "transactional" entanglement involves the two characters having "a lot of sex in this movie."
"There's a lot – a lot," she added.
Paltrow, who became a defining figure of the #MeToo movement in 2017, also said she has been slow to embrace one of the changes to the industry that came out of that period: the rise of intimacy coordinators.
"There's now something called an intimacy coordinator, which I did not know existed," she said.
When the coordinator on set for Marty Supreme asked Paltrow if she'd be OK with a particular interaction, she recalled, "I was like, 'Girl, I'm from the era where you get naked, you get in bed, the camera's on.'"
"We said, 'I think we're good. You can step a little bit back,'" Paltrow continued. "I don't know how it is for kids who are starting out, but … if someone is like, 'Okay, and then he's going to put his hand here,' I would feel, as an artist, very stifled by that."
Paltrow spoke highly of Chalamet, the latest leading man to play opposite the Oscar winner. He joins the company of Brad Pitt, Jude Law, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr and more.
"He's such a thinking man's sex symbol," she said. "He's just a very polite, properly raised, I was going to say 'kid.' He's a man who takes his work really seriously and is a fun partner."
Paltrow's role in the film marks her emergence from semiretirement, as she has been focused on parenting and her wellness and lifestyle brand Goop for much of the last decade. She said her role in the 2010 film Country Strong was her most recent serious acting venture, despite appearing in several Marvel movies and in a supporting role on the series The Politician since then.
Marty Supreme also stars musician Tyler, the Creator, Fran Drescher and Sandra Bernhard. The A24 title hits US theatres Christmas Day. – Los Angeles Times/Tribune News Service
