Formative Performances: Gwyneth Paltrow in “Emma”

For Day 3 of Women’s History Month, I’d like to talk about Gwyneth Paltrow.

No, seriously.

Look, I know we’re not supposed to like Gwyneth Paltrow. Her public persona reeks of privilege and cluelessness about how ordinary people have to live their day-to-day lives. (I bet Mitt Romney subscribes to her newsletter.) But as an actress, she’s always interested me, largely because of Emma.

When I first saw Emma, I was young enough that the concept of an American actress doing an English accent was exciting and daring. After the movie was over, I was shocked to learn that the actress who played Emma was really an American! But, to be fair, Gwyneth Paltrow would also probably be shocked to learn that she’s an American.

All jokes aside, Paltrow’s performance in Emma impressed me. She perfectly embodied an attractive, rich woman who believed that she knew what was best for everyone else and spent her life telling other people what to do.

Okay, no, all jokes aside for REAL, I love her in this movie. This is one of my favorite scenes:

Emma tells Miss Bates that she (Miss Bates) is limited to saying “only three dull things.” I hear her say that, and I cringe. It’s so mean, one of Jane Austen’s meanest moments from all of her books, and it’s coming from her heroine, not from one of her standard Frenemy Bitch characters like Miss Bingley or Lucy Steele or Mrs. Elton.

Kate Beckinsale played this character and moment in the TV adaptation, and she does a good job, but she has a different take on Emma. Her Emma is caught up in being the life of the party. She comments on Miss Bates and laughs at her own joke, looks at her friends and relatives to see their reactions, and realizes too late that she said the wrong thing.

But Paltrow’s Emma is steely in her delivery. She knows she’s saying the wrong thing even as she says it because she wants the upper hand after being snubbed by the Eltons. When she sees how hurt Miss Bates is, she’s horrified – yet not enough to apologize. She has to watch the trainwreck she caused unfold before her eyes.

Emma is probably the most difficult of Austen’s heroines to like, but Gwyneth Paltrow made me appreciate her and connect with her years before I read the book. I have to give her props for that.