Gwyneth Paltrow stopped by to chat with Howard Stern. Right off the bat, Stern brought up a dark piece of Paltrow’s past that she might have wished stayed buried.
It seems that Gwyneth Paltrow was offered the female lead role in the movie Cool as Ice back in 1990. Paltrow would have been about 19 years old, and the role paid. She seriously considered it, but thankfully she had an advisor right in her house.
Paltrow’s parents are actress Blythe Danner and producer/director Bruce Paltrow. Bruce Paltrow was the producer of the television series St. Elsewhere.
“My dad, he was like the greatest asset in my life, and he was so smart,” Gwyneth Paltrow told Stern.
“I said, ‘Dad I don’t know what to do. I got offered the lead in the movie.’ I must have been 19 years old, I was so thrilled. It was like $50,000 and I was starring in a film. And he read it. On the first page the guy asks for my phone number and the number ends in 69-69. He was like, ‘I forbid it!'”
It wasn’t just a matter of not wanting his daughter to ever say something racy. Rather, the elder Paltrow had her career interests in mind.
“I think his worry was, ‘If you’re in Cool as Ice and it doesn’t work, then you’re forever the girl who was in Cool as Ice.'”
The girl who ended up being “the girl who was in Cool as Ice” was Kristin Minter. Minter had already done the annual holiday favorite Home Alone, where she played Kevin’s older sister Heather. Her quotable moment from that movie was this:
Kate McCallister: Heather, did you count heads?
Heather McCallister: Eleven, including me. Five boys, six girls, four parents, two drivers, and a partridge in a pear tree.
Did Cool as Ice kill Kristin Minter’s career? Hardly. She was a regular on ER, has 67 credits to her name, and still works today.
Still, her career obviously has not had the attention that Gwyneth Paltrow’s has. Maybe Gwyneth lucked out in having parents in the business.