Gwyneth Paltrow says she’ll always love ex-boyfriend Brad Pitt for defending her against the advances of disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein.
The actress said that as a 22-year-old, more than two decades ago, she found herself alone in a hotel room with the film executive when he attempted to massage her and invited her to his bedroom. She left immediately, but told Pitt, her boyfriend at the time, about the disturbing encounter. He later confronted Weinstein, who Paltrow said never made a pass at her again.
During an interview with Howard Stern on his radio show Wednesday, Paltrow revealed exactly how Pitt intervened, saying that he once threatened to kill the producer.
She and Pitt were at the opening of a “Hamlet” production on Broadway, “and Harvey was there, and Brad Pitt, it was like the equivalent of throwing [Weinstein] against the wall, you know, energetically,” Paltrow said. “It was so fantastic because what he did was, he leveraged his fame and power to protect me, at a time when I didn’t have fame or power yet. It was, it was fantastic. He’s a good person and Harvey was never inappropriate with me again.”
Pitt told the producer that if he ever made Paltrow “feel uncomfortable again, I’ll kill you,” she added.
But while Paltrow said Weinstein never crossed the line with her again, she later discovered he had been telling actresses that the two had sex to lure other women into his clutches.
Pitt and Paltrow, who were even engaged at one point, split for good in 1997. Shortly after, she began a relationship with Ben Affleck, which she has less fond memories of.
“How did you know not to marry him? You were never in love with him?” Stern asked Paltrow.
“It’s interesting, I think there’s certain boyfriends where you are trying to work stuff out, right? Like you’re trying to heal certain stuff from your childhood and he was very much a lesson in that way,” Paltrow said. “I’m not sure exactly what I was trying to heal in that instance but it was, he was, ya know, it was specific.”
During a separate interview in 2015, Paltrow said Affleck would’ve been “better off dating a Scores stripper.”
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