Paltrow relishes latest role

Gwyneth Paltrow is the kind of well-mannered celebrity who never, even in her gregarious 20s, raised eyebrows by wearing her skirts too short, swaying boozily on a bar top or kissing a man who wasn't her own.

So it is with relish that the actress, now 38 and the kind of conscientious mother of two who coordinates play dates from 5,000 miles away, does all that misbehaving and more as a country star in her new movie, "Country Strong."

"My life is all responsibility," says Paltrow, shrugging into a hooded sweatshirt and kicking off her 3-inch heels after a performance to promote the film at Yahoo in Santa Monica.

"An amazing thing about playing Kelly was this abandon that she had. I envied it in a way. I'm so organized and sometimes you feel like the responsibility you put on yourself is just gonna choke you. It was wonderful to play someone who, to everyone's detriment, just didn't have a care in the world."

Paltrow's Kelly Canter is a train wreck with platinum records. Pulled out of rehab prematurely by her husband-manager (played by country star Tim McGraw), Kelly attempts a comeback. But things get complicated when she takes a shine to a young man with a guitar (Garrett Hedlund of "Tron: Legacy") and faces some fresh-faced competition (Leighton Meester of "Gossip Girl").

Although she's best known lately for playing Iron Man's hypercapable secretary Pepper Potts, this is Paltrow's first major lead performance in seven years, since she became mother to Apple, now 6, and Moses, 4.

It took a role that would require her to sing, dance, rage, weep and access her inner bad girl to lure the actress out of the life of protected domesticity she leads in London with her children and her husband, Coldplay vocalist Chris Martin.

Writer-director Shana Feste said she cast the cosmopolitan Oscar winner as her fallen country star because of the actress's willingness to enter Kelly's turbulent reality.

"I heard the love in her voice and I knew she wasn't going to judge this character," says Feste. "Kelly does a lot of very bad things."

Among the worst is decking McGraw in a drunken tantrum, a scene Paltrow found excruciating to shoot. After multiple takes faking the punch, Feste and the actors agreed to try one for real. "Tim started being very combative with her and egging her on," Feste says. "She ended up whacking him and she started crying afterward."

Compared to its emotional rigors, the role's musical demands were more straightforward. Paltrow, who had sung in the movies "Duets" and "Infamous," took guitar lessons while her children were in school.

She watched Loretta Lynn videos and consulted famous friends such as Beyonce and McGraw's wife, Faith Hill, on everything from exuding magnetism to holding a microphone. By the time she first performed on set, in an intimate scene in which she and Hedlund co-write a song in rehab, the music was the least of Paltrow's worries.

Singing for a crew and enthusiastic extras is one thing. It's quite another to do what Paltrow did in November to promote the film: performing at the Country Music Association Awards in Nashville, strumming a six-string and harmonizing with Vince Gill in front of the industry's elite and a live TV audience.

"Two weeks beforehand, I really thought I had lost my mind," Paltrow says.

In the days before the show, the actress stayed in Hill and McGraw's Nashville guest house and got some counsel. "Tim was like, 'You've got no choice now. Man up.' And Faith said, 'Try to have fun. Enjoy it.' "

She followed it up with more singing on a sweeps-week episode of "Glee."

Music is just Paltrow's latest professional diversion. In 2008, she filmed a travel show and penned a cookbook with chef Mario Batali, and she maintains a blog, Goop, that's the object of some derision for its rarified lifestyle suggestions (Recommended Paris hotel? The Ritz).

Next up for Paltrow is playing a businesswoman with a mysterious ailment in Steven Soderbergh's thriller "Contagion."