Paltrow Says 'Conscious Uncoupling' Cost Her a Job

Gwyneth Paltrow says her much-mocked "conscious uncoupling" didn't just dominate headlines—it cost her a job. Appearing on Amy Poehler's podcast Good Hang, the actor recalled that soon after she and Coldplay frontman Chris Martin announced their separation in 2014 after 11 years of marriage, she was dropped from a film. Paltrow, now 53, said she had been lined up for a role when media scrutiny over the split intensified, CNN reports. "It was like right after the kind of conscious uncoupling thing with Chris and there was like a lot of harsh stuff in the press," she told Poehler. "I think the distributor was like, 'this might be too hot to touch.'" She did not identify the movie or the company involved.

Paltrow, who is currently promoting the film Marty Supreme with Timothée Chalamet, described the timing as especially difficult. "So that was great because I was getting a divorce and then I got fired—it was so awesome," she said wryly. Poehler summed up the distributor's alleged decision as, "they were like, 'we don't need the heat.'"

The "conscious uncoupling" phrase, used by Paltrow and Martin in a joint statement asking for privacy for themselves and their two children, quickly became a cultural punchline. Paltrow told Poehler she thinks some of the backlash came from people projecting their own experiences with painful divorces. The idea that a split might be handled differently, she suggested, may have felt like a criticism to those who went through acrimonious breakups. but that "of course was not the intention."

"Say you had had a really nasty divorce, or your parents had had a really nasty divorce," Paltrow said, per the Guardian. "And then you hear this idea that like, it doesn't have to be done this way. I think the implicit learning is like, 'Oh, f---. Like, they're saying I did something wrong.'" The former couple, who finalized their divorce in 2016, have since described their relationship as amicable; Paltrow has previously said Martin even joined her, husband Brad Falchuk, and their children on their 2019 honeymoon.