Gwyneth Paltrow has been in relationships with two of Hollywood’s biggest heartthrobs — Brad Pitt and Ben Affleck — and when she appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast in May 2023, she opened up about the relationships. Host Alex Cooper never shies away from asking the burning questions everyone wants to know the answers to. During a game of ‘Brad or Ben?’, Alex even asked Gwyneth which of the hunks was better in bed. Gwyneth admitted that that was a “really hard” decision. “Brad was like the sort of major chemistry, love of your life, kind of at the time,” she spilled. “And then Ben was, like, technically excellent. I can’t believe my daughter is listening to this!”
The actress also spilled that Brad was the more romantic of the two, and that Ben made her laugh more often. Alex also got Gwyneth to play a game of “F***, Marry, Kill,” with Brad, Ben and her ex-husband, Chris Martin. It was an easy choice for her to pick Chris as the guy she would marry, and then she went with Brad as the guy she’d sleep with again, leaving Ben as her choice to kill.
Gwyneth and Brad were together for three years from 1994 to 1997, and they even got engaged Dec. 1996, when Gwyn was just 24 years old. However, they never made it down the aisle, splitting up just six months later. Gwyneth went on to start dating Ben in the fall of 1997, only to split just over a year later at the beginning of 1999. The briefly reconciled after working on the 2000 film Bounce, but split for good in Oct. 2000.
Gwyneth and Brad met on the set of Seven, which she said was “major, major love at first sight.” She said that his proposal in Argentina was “fantastic,” but shared that the wedding fell through because she wasn’t ready to tie the knot. “I had a lot of development to do, looking back in hindsight,” Gwyneth admitted. “In a lot of ways, I didn’t really start to come into my self until I was 40 years old.” She said she was “totally heartbroken” after the split, even though she knew it was the “right thing at the time.”
“There were a number of things that happened,” she added. “He was nine years older than me so he knew what he wanted. He was ready to do it and I was all over the place. It was really one of those difficult things where I felt like, ‘Oh my God, not only am I not ready, I’m not living up to the standards again.'” Gwyneth and Brad have stayed friends in the years since, and she even called him a “great guy” in the interview.