I actually quite enjoyed the last GOOP featuring an interview with Cynthia Bourgeault about her new book The Meaning of Mary Magdalene. It sounds like a fascinating read. And though it doesn’t happen often, GOOP’s profile of it has put it on my book list. Here’s a quick taste:

“The Da Vinci Code did some very good work, pointing its finger directly at the place from which so much of the denial and dysfunction in Christianity arises. But the Da Vinci code is itself a product of the same reactive and stereotypic thinking about human sexuality that it’s trying to debunk. Its most urgent agenda is all about whether Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married; whether they had sex; whether the church has a “deep, dirty secret” to hide. There is no attention given to any sense of Mary Magdalene as a fully qualified apostle; no sense that an intimate relationship with Jesus might be a valid path of spiritual transformation; and a simplistic (to say the least!) and even mean-spirited understanding of both the teaching and integrity of Jesus.”

Right? Click here for more.

And the new issue of Elle Magazine is devoted to The Women in Hollywood with Kate Hudson on the cover and including profiles of Hilary Swank, Kerry Washington, Diane Kruger, Sofia Coppola, and, yes, Gwyneth Paltrow. Her portraits are attached.

You will have the most fun though with this quote:

Q. Have you ever had a casting-couch experience?
A. Yup. When I was just starting out, someone suggested that we finish a meeting in the bedroom. I left. I was pretty shocked. I could see how someone who didn’t know better might worry, “My career will be ruined if I don’t give this guy a blow job!”

Of course your immediate association is the Weinstein rumour, right? For a long, long time people have sniped that Gwyneth allegedly f-cked Weinstein to get Viola in Shakespeare in Love and went on to win her Oscar after stealing the script from Winona Ryder’s house. I’m not convinced of this... simply because of Paltrow’s pedigree. Steven Spielberg is her godfather. And in retrospect, given what we now know of Winona, which many people in the industry would have known about for a long time before it became public, and on the heels of Gwyneth’s lovely performance in Emma, the legitimacy of that entire story has become rather shaky.

Having said that, has my G gotten ahead from nepotism? Oh please, of course. She’s as connected as they come. She would have had to hustle for parts. She would have lorded that over people like Charlize Theron. Hate on her for that instead.

And I suspect this will annoy you too:

“I wasn’t in many of the action scenes (in Iron Man). Since those take, like, two weeks to film, I would be lying by the pool with my kids and having picnics with them in L.A. It was awesome!”

Finally, they also included a photo from The Talented Mr Ripley. I totally forgot. It will be a reunion, won’t it?

"The movie I’m working on now, [Steven Soderbergh’s] Contagion, has an amazing ensemble cast. I’ll get to act with Matt Damon and Jude Law again.”

God Anthony Minghella made beautiful movies.

Click here to see all the Elle portraits. Note the snotty face of G’s that they decided to use on their mainpage. It’s my favourite.