Gwyneth Paltrow Has a Surprising Use for Her Oscar

In 1999, Gwyneth Paltrow won an Academy Award for her role as Viola de Lesseps in Shakespeare in Love, but if you think the actor is keeping her Oscar statuette on a shelf where she can admire it, you would be wrong. During a "73 Questions" interview with Vogue, Paltrow revealed that she has put her Best Actress Oscar to work as a doorstop at her home in the Hamptons.

In the video, Paltrow takes the interviewer through her home while he asks questions and leads him to her garden. As they pass through a door, the camera pauses on the item holding it open: Paltrow's Oscar. When the interviewer, Joe Sabia comments "What a beautiful Academy Award," Paltrow joked that it works "perfectly" in that capacity.

"My doorstop," she said. "It works perfectly."

Paltrow has previously said that winning said Oscar led to her having something of an "identity crisis", as success had happened very quickly for her.

"Once I won the Osar, it put me into a little bit of an identity crisis, because if you win the biggest prize, like what are you supposed to do?" Paltrow said during an appearance on the Call Her Daddy podcast. "And where are you supposed to go? It was hard, like, the amount of attention that you receive on a night like that and the weeks following is so disorienting and, frankly, really unhealthy. Not that I would give it back or anything, it was an amazing experience, but it kind of called a lot of things into question for me."

Paltrow Recently Revealed Why She Hasn't Returned to the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Paltrow played Pepper Potts in the MCU, though following Avengers: Endgame she's expressed that she thinks she may be done but isn't necessarily opposed to a return to the franchise given that her character is still alive. In August, though, she explained why she doesn't see the need to return — or for her character to, either.

"Oh my god stop yelling at me!" Paltrow responded on social media to a fan. "I didn't, I just, it just — we just stopped doing it because Iron Man died and why do you need Pepper Potts without Iron Man? I don't know! Call Marvel and yell at them, not me. I'm just sitting here."

Did Gwyneth Paltrow Retire From Acting?

Paltrow has also in recent years indicated that she's "semi-retired" from acting.

"Being a kid who's, like, living every breakup on every headline, being criticized for everything you do, say and wear, and also... [acting is] so transitory," Paltrow said in late 2020. "You're always all over. It's hard to plant roots. Like I'm such a homebody, you know, me, I like to be with my old friends and cook and squeeze my kids. I don't want to be alone in a hotel room in Budapest for six weeks. Like, it's just not who I am. So, if you compound those things with the fact that, you know, to be totally candid, I had a really rough boss for most of my movie career at Miramax. So, you take all those things."

Paltrow seemed to reference the idea of being semi-retired from acting when, in the Vogue interview, she was asked what she misses most about being a Hollywood leading lady and she responded, "Nothing."

What do you think about Paltrow's use for her Academy Award? Let us know in the comment section.