Gwyneth Paltrow Says She 'Wanted to Be' an Actor Like Her Mother Blythe Danner as a Kid

The GOOP founder described her mother as "the most powerful, integrated force of nature" during a conversation at the Red Sea International Film Festival

Gwyneth Paltrow is crediting her mother, Blythe Danner, for inspiring her own acting career.

The GOOP founder, 51, got candid about her early years as an actor during a discussion at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Saudi Arabia, when she shared with "In Conversation" moderator Jomana Al-Rashid that her mother played an important role in how she perceived acting early on.

“My mother is an actress. She did mostly theater. And so I grew up as a little girl watching her rehearse plays and running around the theater," Paltrow shared, per Variety.

"My mother would even say she always felt a bit insecure," she added. "When she was on stage, she was the most powerful, integrated force of nature that I have ever seen. And so I wanted to be that.”

Related: Blythe Danner Reveals Private Battle with the Same Cancer that Killed Her Husband Bruce Paltrow: 'I Feel Lucky to Be Alive'

Paltrow's mother, 80, has won both Emmy and Tony awards for her work in theatre and television, and has notably starred in projects, such as Meet the Parents and Will & Grace.

Paltrow has previously been open about her admiration for Danner. In 2021, she celebrated her mother's birthday with a heartfelt Instagram tribute, calling her a "beautiful creature."

"She gets words and names mixed up in the most hilarious and unique of ways," Paltrow wrote in the post. "She is full of life and incredibly strong. She loves her grandchildren more than anything in the world. She loves Bill Evans, eating leftovers and keeping her own company."

The Marvel alum added that she admires "so many things about" her mother, who welcomed Paltrow in 1972 with husband Bruce Paltrow, who died in 2002.

Related: 3 Generations! Gwyneth Paltrow Looks Radiant with Mother Blythe Danner and Daughter Apple Martin

Elsewhere during Paltrow's conversation at Red Sea, she detailed what she learned from another longtime actress, Jessica Lange, who she worked with on Hush in 1998.

While she described the film she created alongside Lange as "really, really terrible," Paltrow explained that she still took away a lot from "watching her" on set.

"She had such an interesting style and technique that she had developed over all these years," she said. "And so some people like that… I think about these amazing people that I got to work with and see all the different ways and then kind of made my own techniques.”

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Paltrow also detailed some of her work in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, sharing that 2008's Iron Man directed Jon Favreau was pitched to her "like doing an indie film." The actress has since appeared as character Pepper Potts in seven total films.

“They said it’s going to feel like doing an indie film. We’re gonna have fun and you don’t have to be in too much of the action part anyway," she said. "So I thought, 'Oh, okay.' And we had such a good time. We improvised almost every scene of that movie. We would write it in the morning in Jon’s trailer, and it was like doing [an indie] film."

"Then, the movie was such a huge hit that we didn’t make them like that anymore. To be honest, I stopped watching them at some point. I’ve never seen Endgame. I’ve never seen any of these. I can’t keep track. I probably should at some point,” Paltrow said.

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