Gwyneth Paltrow—last seen getting made fun of by Stephen Colbert over Goop magazine—rarely wins the internet, unless running a no-doubt insanely lucrative lifestyle brand counts as winning the internet, which it does. But give the Goop maven her due: She wore an amazing Halloween costume this year. Take a look, as long as you don’t mind spoilers from a 22-year-old movie:
That’s the box from the end of Se7en, the one that has Gwyneth Paltrow’s head in it. Her boyfriend Brad Falchuk seems to have spent a little more effort on his part of the costume: To play Kevin Spacey’s maniacal killer he tracked down a prison jumpsuit, handcuffs, everything but the shaved head. Paltrow, in contrast, just wore street clothes and put a cardboard box over her head, though she did find a perfect match for the “FRAGILE” labels the box is sporting in the movie. But effort will only get you so far: Falchuk doesn’t look anything like Spacey, while Gwyneth Paltrow is a dead ringer for Gwyneth Paltrow. Advantage: Paltrow.
Falchuk didn’t have much of a choice about playing Spacey, though—the other characters in that scene are Morgan Freeman, which, nope, or Brad Pitt, whose relationship with Paltrow started after they met on the set of Se7en, which would change this from a Se7en costume to a Vertigo costume real quick, so double nope. It’s gotta be a little loaded, asking your current beau to play part of a couple’s costume based on a movie you starred in with an ex by the same first name, especially if your ex played one of the heroes and you want your new boyfriend to play the villain. (It’s not much consolation that Spacey’s character ultimately “wins” either, given how he does it.) There’s exactly one person who can pull off any part of this costume, and it’s not Brad Falchuk, or Brad Pitt (imagine the response if he had someone else play Paltrow’s severed head), or anyone chuckling at the photo, who would just look like they were wearing a box on their head. This costume is designed for Gwyneth Paltrow and no one else.
Which means that, in the end, Paltrow’s Halloween costume sends the same message that you’ll find in Goop (or, with variation, in Draper James, or Sean John, or the Worshipful Company of Weavers by Appointment to His Majesty Henry II): She’s Gwyneth Paltrow, and you’re not.
Here’s the final scene from Se7en, so you can check out the labels on the box for yourself:
