At this point, it’s stardom optional

GWYNETH PALTROW quietly braided her hair into pigtails. She was explaining that she and her brother had never been wild, and that her mother, actress Blythe Danner, isn’t just fronting when she puts on that famously patrician face.

“God,” she said, “the other day we were at a dinner, and someone started talking about pornography for some reason. And brought up something, a sexual act, and my mother was like, ‘Whaaaat?’ Like it was so -- it was something really gross that she’d never heard of. And she was half-horrified and sort of intrigued. But it was really funny. And then my brother’s girlfriend was like, ‘C’mon, she lives for this stuff.’ ”

“We’re trying to get her to go on a date with somebody,” she said. (Bruce Paltrow, Danner’s husband and Paltrow’s father, died in October 2002.) “Not somebody in particular, but ... we would like her to start. She doesn’t want to. It’s early days, I guess.”

Paltrow had just returned to New York from Los Angeles and looked every bit the gorgeous 1970s Sunset magazine, Calabasas-wind-in-the-hair California girl. She wore flip-flops and a denim skirt in the dark of the Tribeca Grill, near her new Manhattan home.

These days, though, her regular commute goes another way, as she and her husband split their time between New York and London.

“Sometimes when I first get home to England, I think, ‘Oh, I love it here, it’s so clean, and the parks, and it’s so civilized, and the architecture’s so beautiful,’ and I have a love affair. And after three months I think, ‘Oh, I would just like the Internet to be reconnected, I would just like some customer service, I would just like a chopped salad, I would just like some air conditioning.’ And then I come back to America. And I think, ‘Oh, wow, the portions are so big, and everyone’s so friendly in the stores!’ And then I love it here.”

And soon enough ... “It’s really humid and gritty and dirty and crowded and I think, ‘It’s time to go back to England.’ ”

New York has its graver pitfalls too -- as does London, again. “You have to just believe that nothing’s gonna happen in order to live here,” she said, “otherwise how could you carry on living here?

“I watched ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ last night. I’d seen it in the theater, but I’d brought Apple” -- her daughter -- “and she was tiny, so I left like 70 times because I was trying to calm her down and I missed the end and stuff. And now, since the film has finished, what’s going on in Iraq and what’s going on every day? And you see that footage of Bush landing and saying ‘Mission accomplished’ and he just looks like the biggest moron of all time.”

One might have forgotten, from the conversation, that Paltrow had a film of her own coming out. Perhaps she forgets sometimes as well: “Proof,” which will be released Friday, has been in the can for a while. It’s a product of Paltrow’s time in London, where she took the play’s role on the stage. The film version is being released in the great Miramax rush of 2005, in which a number of films of varying ages are being unleashed as the company reformulates.

“There was all kinds of trouble, you know,” said Paltrow, “and Harvey [Weinstein] was leaving, and there was negotiations, and all this stuff. I’m not sure exactly why it was held, but it was great for me. Because I did it when I was pregnant, and to have a movie coming out now, particularly a movie that I’m so proud of and that I think is so good, is great. Because I’ve taken off such a long time.... “

ADDING SOME DISTANCE

PALTROW’S relationship with Weinstein -- like the one she has with “Proof” director John Madden, of “Shakespeare in Love” -- was cemented ages ago. “We have a relationship that’s like family.... We’ve done a lot of good work together over the years. Sometimes we really don’t like each other. But that’s sort of how it goes. He can be quite horrible -- like, the bad version of him is horrible. But the good version of him is totally sublime and fantastic. But the connection will always be there -- it is like family to me.”

But with Weinstein off in his new company and with Paltrow having turned her attention to family, industry ties seem to be less important in terms of guidance. The scripts, of course, come in -- but apparently they’re just a bit buried under baby toys and the guitars belonging to her husband, Coldplay’s Chris Martin.

“Probably like two a week or something like that” arrive, she said. “I’m not saying I read them all. But that’s how many I’m supposed to read.”

“I get inspired when I see a peer of mine where I think, ‘Oh, she was great, and what a great film.’ That never happens anymore. So rarely.... It’s just been so difficult to find something, even as a fan, to really love and inspire me to go back to work. And that’s part of it. I haven’t felt that part of me be really reignited.”

Kate Winslet and Annette Bening give her that thrill -- and she felt it particularly while working with Bening on “Running With Scissors,” due out next year. With a baby to care for, “I was still really gun-shy about working. It was the first time I hadn’t been the person to put Apple to sleep at night. I was really traumatized by it.”

Bening does, in fact, seem to have it all figured out. “I feel that she’s so authentic and somebody that I would like to be like -- I don’t know her very well as a person, but that kind of model? Four kids, good marriage, one film a year, something that’s good. Luckily her husband’s rich, so she doesn’t have to do a cheesy movie.”

But it’s also not the roles, the scripts, the whatever. Paltrow is having real-life time now, sussing out what’s comfortable, and who can blame her for not caring as much about work?

“My dog just died. I had a black Lab forever, and he died.... Someone said, the day they had to put him to sleep -- I was really upset -- and someone said, ‘Oh, you know, Bruce is walking him in heaven right now.’ And I thought, ‘Wouldn’t that be great if that were true?’

“And today, just before I came, [Apple] was sitting in her chair. And she’s got gorgeous blond curls, and she’s eating with a fork, and saying the word ‘broccoli,’ and saying, ‘chew chew chew.’ And I just think, ‘My God, we’ve made this brilliant, hilarious, totally empathetic creature.’

“I may go back to work in January. I’m thinking about it. But maybe not,” she said. She smiled, realizing she was being a tease. “We’ll see.”