Gwyneth Paltrow: Poetry Is Sexy

Aug. 13 -- Gwyenth Paltrow says she savors roles that let her escape the American limelight, and that's what she did making her new film, Possession, which was shot in London, where her acting was more about work than it was about celebrity.

"You know, I really liked being in England," she said today on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America. "I think it's true that I do get to kind of put my life here aside and I don't have to sort of fill the kind of celebrity aspect of my life that I'm expected to fulfill all the time."

Poetry and Romance

In Possession, a romantic period drama directed by Neil LaBute and based on a novel by A.S. Byatt, Paltrow adopts an English accent for the role of Maud Bailey, an emotionally cool British academic. Her character teams up with an American scholar, played by Aaron Eckhart, for some literary sleuthing into the lives of two Victorian-era poets.

Paltrow says there is something sexy about the poetry in the film.

"Most might not think that lives of academics and poems are sexy but I think it is. I think it's very real, and I find real romance very sexy," Paltrow said.

Paltrow's own high-profile romances have been featured in gossip columns around the nation.

Paltrow, who was once engaged to actor Brad Pitt, says she won't comment on a more recent ex-boyfriend's new romance. When asked about Ben Affleck's relationship with Jennifer Lopez, Paltrow said she doesn't talk about her own private life, and doesn't feel comfortable talking about other people's either.

Recently, Paltrow has starred in a series of contemporary movie roles. In Bounce, she played a widowed single mom, and in Shallow Hal, she donned a fat suit to play a 300-pound woman.

In Possession, the actress returns to playing a literary character — as she did in some of her most-lauded performances, including her Oscar-winning performance as the Bard's muse Viola in Shakespeare in Love, and her role as the title heroine in Jane Austen's Emma.