Gwyneth Paltrow has a radiant presence on screen that feels natural and unaffected. Born into an acting family, she starred in many films in the 1990s, the high point of which was her Academy Award win in 1999 for her role as Shakespeare’s muse Viola. She later admitted that the win led her to make some poor subsequent film choices as she was unequipped for the kind of pressure the award brought her. She also became a mother in 2004 and reduced her work load at that time. She still managed to produce occasional critically-acclaimed work throughout the 2000s, while also making a popular resurgence among a different generation of viewers with her role as Pepper Potts, the romantic foil for Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2008.
Paltrow has tried to balance commercial roles with other choices that she considers as labors of love above other considerations. Even though she isn’t as cinematically active at this point as in the past (as she dedicates time to managing her lifestyle company Goop and its associated reality TV shows for Netflix), Paltrow already has a respectable body of work on her resume. It’s as good a time as any to go through some of its high points and list the best movies Gwyneth Platrow has starred in.
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7 Contagion (2011)
In Contagion, a pandemic outbreak is chronicled through a vast array of characters and cross-cutting narratives that show different responses, from charlatanism to decision-making by people in charge, in a landscape that much resembles our present one. Director Steven Soderbergh’s electric style, helped by a great score from Cliff Martinez that relies heavily on electronic instruments, gives the movie its identity. Paltrow plays patient zero. She contracts the virus in Hong Kong, and then officials try to track everyone she’s been in contact with since. She’s the subject of inquiry in this movie, and she’s in the final frame that Soderbergh chooses to end on.
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6 Proof (2005)
Miramax
Paltrow received a Golden Globe nomination for her excellent portrayal of depression in John Madden’s Proof. Director and star re-teamed here after their work on Shakespeare in Love. Paltrow’s character Catherine is the daughter of a deceased great mathematician, played by the always-compelling Anthony Hopkins. She has dreams and flashbacks of her dad, his touch of madness and instability, and their relationship. She’s visited by an ex-student of her father’s who’s digging for proofs of his genius, as well as her sister who struggles to understand the depression she’s living with. Paltrow plays the character at the center of all that very well with a naturalistic performance. The character is involved in an interesting twist towards the end.
5 The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
Paramount PicturesMiramax
Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) spells out his talents early on in the film: “Forging signatures, telling lies, impersonating practically anybody.” The father of Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law) mistakes him for a classmate of his son’s and asks him to go to Italy to convince his playboy son to return home instead of spending away his days without purpose. For Tom, the assignment turns into an elongated stay in gorgeous, sun-drenched scenery with tantalizing people, and then soon takes a dark turn. Gwyneth Paltrow plays Dickie’s lover Marge, caught in the midst of a web of lies and her painful love for Dickie (for whose attention many are competing). Adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley is a gripping and aesthetically story of envy, desires, deception, crime and other twists.
4 The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Touchstone Pictures
The Royal Tenenbaums is a story of family dysfunction from the master of family dysfunction movies, Wes Anderson. It’s probably his most mature work with the theme alongside Moonrise Kingdom. Paltrow plays her part in proceedings with the character of Margot, who is adopted into the Tenenbaum family. Paltrow plays slightly against type, as Margot is an unemotive chain-smoker, hiding her pain behind a polished exterior of heavy makeup and a dead-straight bob.
3 Two Lovers (2008)
2929 Productions
Adapted from a Fyodor Dostoyevsky 1848 short story, and directed by James Gray in his usual quietly sensitive style, Two Lovers is a love triangle story starring Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow and Vinessa Shaw. There’s deceit, unrequited love, and other interesting dynamics as Paltrow and Shaw each bring a very different type of potential relationship with Phoenix’s character. The movie is refreshing in that it doesn’t follow any predefined tropes. It also has an ending that invites thought from the viewer to decide how they might come to terms with it.
2 Shakespeare in Love (1998)
Universal Pictures
Shakespeare in Love is an endlessly quotable and rewatchable tale of love, melancholy, and comedy in which Paltrow lights up the screen with her golden hair that matches the film’s often yellowish hues. She’s Viola, Shakespeare’s muse for Romeo and Juliet, and as the film indicates at the end, for many more stories to come. That final sequence makes for one of the best endings in cinema. Mixing bitterness and hope, it sees Shakespeare helped by Viola to widen his gaze and turn tragedy into inspiration. Viola’s “soul is greater than the ocean,” and she will be his “heroine for all time.” Gwyneth Paltrow turns in a great performance that makes those words believable and convincing.
1 Se7en (1995)
Cecchi Gori Pictures
Se7en is one of the most difficult films of all time. If not properly contended with, it can be crushingly depressing. But this masterful film from David Fincher is not in fact a work of nihilism. It’s more of a very human and profoundly meaningful tragedy about a set of responses to the problem of evil with other evils and mistaken attitudes. Part of the reason it’s such a compelling work that can’t be dismissed lies in the way it nuances its somber tone with a felt humanity. And that’s what Gwyneth Paltrow, along with co-stars Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt, brings to the table. The warmth of the dinner scene between these three, for example, is instrumental to the film’s success. Paltrow deserves special credit as she really embodies what could be lost if we become extremists in fighting evil.
