Gwyneth Turned Down a Casting Couch Offer

This item popped up on ONTD, where Gwyneth Paltrow confesses that someone once offered her a role for sex:

“When I started out, someone suggested that we finish a meeting in the bedroom,” the actress, 38, tells Elle magazine in its Women in Hollywood issue. “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!'”

Glad to hear she knew better – and her reward was being able to bed Brad Pitt in his absolute prime, not to mention winning an Oscar. Paltrow also had the benefit of having industry parents, Blythe Danner and Bruce Paltrow. One wonders what many of the young actresses who didn’t have that foundation have been forced to do.

The source for this story is Elle Magazine’s Women in Hollywood issue with Kate Hudson on the cover. I didn’t cover it because it, like every other major magazine story about actresses features only white women. It should have been called Elle Magazine’s White Women in Hollywood issue. It should be noted that they do feature one black actress, Kerry Washington, is featured in the piece. Sofia Coppola is given some ink for her upcoming film, Somewhere.

So go ahead and take me to task for being too politically correct if you’d like, as Guy Lodge did on Twitter a few days ago. But my daughter goes to school with hundreds of girls who aren’t white. They have to grow up into this world too. The sad part is that white people sell magazines. That’s why they are on the cover exclusively; it isn’t a conspiracy. Surely there has to be a happy medium there somewhere.