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Gwyneth Paltrow is a shoulder for Madonna to cry on
Ellen Widdup and Elizabeth Hopkirk21 Oct 2008
MADONNA has turned to her A-list friends to cope with her increasingly bitter divorce battle with film director Guy Ritchie, it emerged today.
Close friend Gwyneth Paltrow, 36, revealed how she was talking regularly to the singer, as arguments between the feuding couple become increasingly public.
Speaking at the premiere of her new film Two Lovers, the Oscar-winning actress said: "She's a very good friend. I'm supporting her in all the ways that I can. I'm just there for her. I speak to her a lot."
The pair have a well-publicised friendship, are both yoga fans and both split their time between the US and UK.
Paltrow's new film, in which she stars with Joaquin Phoenix, tells the tale of a heartbroken man whose parents set him up with the daughter of a family friend. But he meets Michelle (Paltrow) a volatile woman who has recently moved into the same apartment block.
Wearing a long black dress, Paltrow appeared at the Two Lovers premiere, part of the BFI London Film Festival. She said she was attracted to the film because of director James Gray's European sensibilities.
But Paltrow, wife of Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, said that although she had enjoyed the project, she had no intention of overworking. She said: "I'll never do the five-movies-a-year thing ever again, but one or two good ones, I'm game." She has always been careful to limit the time she spends away from her husband and two children Apple and Moses.
Friends of Madonna have said the singer lacks the ability to do the same and is always putting her career first. One source told her biographer J Randy Taraborrelli: "With Guy, it was the first time in her life she thought she would sacrifice anything to stay together. But the problem was that she didn't properly gauge her ambition. Everyone talks about her ambition but at its core it's really an addiction. Her addiction is constantly seeking approval from everyone in the world, and that is a never-ending job."
Mr Taraborrelli claims that after every tour Madonna, 50, would promise Ritchie that she would never do another. He told Hello! magazine: "But then, two years later, she would inevitably be planning the next one, even bigger than the last." Another friend of the couple told Taraborrelli: "People don't realise how impossible it has been to both be a wife and mother and be Madonna at the same time."
She added that they had tried to make it work for the sake of their children Lourdes, 12, Rocco, eight and David, three.
A friend of Ritchie, 40, added that he felt controlled by Madonna. "On the last tour, he finally had enough," he told Mr Taraborrelli.
"There was a moment we were waiting in the van for her to get off stage. I said to him, 'How long have you been waiting for her?' And his answer was, 'All I do is wait for her. That's my job, waiting for Madonna'."
Sources say as soon as the singer's Sticky & Sweet tour ends, she will move to New York with the couple's children. Ritchie has no intention of leaving London.
Reader views (1)
"Increasingly bitter divorce"
...and if it wasn't, then anyone and everyone even remotely interested in it will see what they can do to make it so.
I'm no great fan of Madonna, but I feel sorry for her and her soon to be ex, both. Their lives are about to be dragged through the mud, mostly by others, and they will have little to say in the matter but will be carried along on a wave of busy-body interference and gossip - mongering.
- Rogan, Irving, 21/10/2008 23:31
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