Gwyneth Paltrow recalled a frightening moment when she woke up in a London hotel and thought she was having a heart attack.
The moment occurred as she deeply mourned the death of her father, Bruce Paltrow, in 2002.
As Paltrow struggled with the loss, she said on The Hollywood reporter‘s Awards Chatter podcast that she felt like she was “going to die of sadness.”
Looking back on that time, the actress said: “There was one night I woke up and thought I was having a heart attack in London. And the only reason I didn’t call an ambulance was because I didn’t know it was 999. [in Britain] not 911 [as in America]. I was so tormented with grief.”
However, Paltrow shared that she survived that night and to help her process her emotions, she went to work and took on the role of poet Sylvia Plath in the 2003 film Sylvia.
“It saved my life,” Paltrow admitted. “It’s really the way I process things. It’s the way I access the dark parts of myself that I don’t really like and let them come up and out.”
“It was such a blessing to get up every day and go somewhere… Just to have the structure of the day so I could go somewhere and all day it was just me doing it [the grief] and let it out and let it out. And listening to Sigur Ros and sobbing and letting it out really saved me,” she added.
Days after her father’s death, Paltrow met Chris Martin. They tied the knot and welcomed two children, Apple and Moss, before splitting in 2014 after ten years of marriage.
