She seems acutely aware that her newfound freedom has definite limits. Viola also serves as the voice of reason through the course of their affair, repeatedly reminding Will that their “stolen season” cannot last. She is the architect of her own adventure she decides to pose as a man to audition for Will’s play, and she initiates the romance between them with a desperate kiss. The script, written by Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman, gives Viola plenty of agency. While Viola exudes a starry-eyed naivete in some ways, she also knows what she’s getting into. She is dazzled as we are meant to be dazzled. Everything about the theatre delights her. (“Playhouses are not for well born ladies,” Viola’s nurse reminds her early in the film.) Viola wants to be an actor because she sincerely believes in the power of poetry to move people. By presenting as a man, she gains access to a world from which she had previously been barred by virtue of her gender and class. She also joins Will’s company of players from an outsider’s perspective.
#Gwyneth paltrow shakespeare in love oscar movie
She begins the movie as a Shakespeare fan like us, she reveres his words and holds his work in high regard. Viola sits at the very center of the film, serving as the audience’s proxy. As Viola’s nuptials loom, Will turns his play into a tragedy, immortalising their star-crossed love. Viola is set to marry another man, Lord Wessex (Colin Firth), in two weeks’ time, thus dooming her entanglement with Will to be short-lived. Once Will discovers that Viola and Kent are one and the same person, the lady and the poet begin a romance that carries on as they work together in rehearsals for the new play. Will, thoroughly taken with the performance, casts Kent as Romeo, the lead. An avowed admirer of Shakespeare’s, Viola-as-Kent recites a monologue from The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Viola, dressed as a man and using the name Thomas Kent, auditioned for Will’s newest play.
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Unbeknownst to Will, he has already met Viola when he “first” sees her. Will (played here to rakish perfection by Joseph Fiennes) finds his inspiration when he lays eyes on Viola de Lesseps (Paltrow), the daughter of a wealthy merchant, and falls immediately in love. The incredibly clever script, with its postmodern flourishes, imagines William Shakespeare as a fake-it-til-you-make-it type struggling to find inspiration for his latest play-a comedy he has already sold but not yet written. Shakespeare in Love tells a fictionalised account of how the Bard wrote his romantic tragedy Romeo and Juliet. The actress strikes a pitch perfect note as the cross-dressing, sex-positive, rule-bending Lady Viola de Lesseps.
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But I would like to remind anyone reading this that Shakespeare in Love launched Paltrow into superstardom for a reason: she’s good in it. I’m not going to argue that Weinstein’s notorious campaigning blitz had nothing to do with Shakespeare in Love’s strong showing at the Oscars. Look, I’m not here to defend Paltrow as a person or to say that she absolutely deserved to win over the other actresses nominated that year. Paltrow and her rarefied existence have become easy to mock and easy to hate. Goop has come under legitimate criticism for peddling potentially harmful pseudoscience, as well as for selling aspirational products with ludicrously expensive price tags. It also doesn’t hurt that Paltrow herself has effectively retired from acting and pivoted to running her wellness and lifestyle brand, Goop.
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The horrific revelations about Weinstein have only made it more admissible to write off the film’s successes it’s possible that Close meant to highlight the darker side of awards campaigning by explicitly referencing Weinstein’s most high-profile awards coup. The Oscar success of Shakespeare in Love in 1999 has long been ascribed to then-Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein’s overbearing and unprecedentedly expensive campaigning techniques that year. Indeed, while entertainment news sites enthusiastically reported the dig, there appeared to be little disagreement with Close’s assessment. Twenty years on, Close’s comments are closer to received wisdom than a scalding hot take.
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Close recalls thinking, upon learning Paltrow had won over fellow nominee Fernanda Montenegro, “It doesn’t make sense.” The actress spoke about how difficult it can be to “honestly compare performances” before singling out Paltrow. In an interview with film critic Peter Travers, Close, currently in the midst of her own Oscar campaign for Hillbilly Elegy, talked candidly about the politics of awards season. Recently, Glenn Close made headlines for naming Gwyneth Paltrow’s Best Actress Oscar win for Shakespeare in Love as an example of an undeserved victory, influenced more by external factors than the quality of the performance itself.