Gwyneth Paltrow doesn’t seem to prioritise her MCU movies much.
The CEO of Goop and an Academy Award–winning actress, gave a brief introduction to her career Thursday evening at the Red Sea Film Festival in Saudi Arabia.
Jomana Alrashid, co-chief of the festival, questioned Paltrow about which of her roles and films have stuck with her over the years.
Paltrow is most renowned for her major part in the MCU as Iron Man's companion Pepper Potts, but she won a leading actress Oscar for John Madden's Shakespeare in Love.
"The Royal Tenenbaums," she replied. “That film has stayed with people. My daughter’s friends watch it and love it all these years later.”
Marvel's Avengers: Endgame, which Paltrow revealed to the Jeddah crowd she had never actually seen, was her last major film credit.
“To be honest, I stopped watching them at some point. I’ve never seen End Game. I can’t keep track of who’s what. But I probably should at some point,” she said of the later MCU films.
Breaking down her sluggish frustration with the MCU, Paltrow revealed that she was persuaded to appear alongside Robert Downey Jr. in the first Iron Man movie despite her strong objections.
She was told that despite the movie's superhero clichés, the production would still be distinctive and intellectually challenging.
“The first film we did was very different from the rest because the studio didn’t think it was going to be a big hit,” she said.
“They hired Jon Favreau to direct who was great. And they hired Robert Downey Jr., who was unhireable at the time. His career was at a very low point.”
Paltrow went on to claim that the group was given the flexibility to try new things because the movie had such minimal stakes for the company and they approached every day on set as an independent film.
“We improvised almost every scene of that movie. We would write scenes in the morning in Jon’s trailer. It was like doing an independent film. Then the movie was such a huge hit that then we didn’t make them like that anymore.”