Paltrow and Pitt famously dated for two years in the ’90s before getting engaged and then called it quits six months later
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Gwyneth Paltrow is reflecting on her high-profile romance with Brad Pitt.
The Oscar winners famously dated after meeting during readings for the 1994 film Legends of the Fall, and later went on to star in the 1995 thriller Se7en. They dated during that timeframe and got engaged in December 1996, but broke up six months later.
Speaking with Vanity Fair for her April cover story, published Tuesday, March 18, Paltrow, now 52, said of Pitt, 61, “He’s a very intriguing character.”
“It’s like having dated, I don’t know, Prince William or something. That’s always going to come up,” said the actress and Goop founder.
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During her interview, Paltrow also recalled Pitt once being “over for my birthday” while she was filming a movie in the English countryside, working up to 20 hours a day, six days a week.
After she was granted 12 hours off, she told Vanity Fair, a producer “made me feel like I was the most entitled … ” she said. “It was such a horrible feeling.”
Paltrow thought, then, that the producer might “[craft] a story that I’m being difficult … and of course you didn’t say anything, because you could already tell that the guy with the power was like, ‘I don’t like what I’m seeing here.’ ”
She and Pitt have both long since moved on with others: Paltrow wed (and later famously “consciously uncoupled” from) Coldplay frontman Chris Martin before tying the knot with writer Brad Falchuk in 2018.
Pitt was married to Jennifer Aniston from 2000 to 2005 and later started a family with Angelina Jolie, whom he dated for nine years before they wed in 2014 and split up in 2016. The actor has been in a relationship with jewelry designer Ines de Ramon since 2022.
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Paltrow previously opened up about her romance with Pitt on the Call Her Daddy podcast back in May 2023, recalling how the connection between the two was instant and “major love at first sight.”
Revealing she called off their engagement because she wasn’t ready to marry, the Shakespeare in Love star told host Alex Cooper that she was still “totally heartbroken when we broke up.”
“It was the right thing at that time, but it was really hard,” Paltrow explained. “There were a number of things that had happened, he was nine years older than me … he knew what he wanted, he was ready to do it, and I was kind of all over the place.”
“So it was really one of those difficult things, where I felt like, ‘Oh my God, not only am I not ready, I’m not living up to the standards again.’ It was a familiar refrain I felt about myself,” she added.
