Gwyneth defends Plath film

Gwyneth Paltrow has spoken out in defence of her new film - which follows the doomed passion between literary lovers Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes - after it was savaged by a US writer and the couple's only daughter.

Fox News columnist Roger Friedman described Sylvia as "a two-hour miseryfest" after its US release, while Frieda Hughes vetoed all co-operation with the biopic, branding it "insensitive" and saying: "I will never, never in a million years go and see it."

But Paltrow, who plays Plath in the film, has dismissed the negative reviews and insists the film respects its famous subjects. She also denies reports she is suffering from clinical depression after her father's sudden death last year.

On the set of her next film, Proof, she said: "A writer in New York - he's not even a film critic - wrote a mean review. I didn't see it, but we were surprised. Then I heard a newspaper here in the UK picked it up."

As Sylvia is yet to be released in this country, Paltrow added: "I don't think it's fair to judge a film before they have even seen it." In the movie, Paltrow stars opposite British actor Daniel Craig as Hughes.

The film shows that Plath committed suicide in 1963 at the age of 30 - four months after Hughes left her to pursue another woman. Paltrow insists it is a fair and balanced examination of their lives. She said: "It is a very intelligent, wellhandled emotional piece, as opposed to a salacious, gossipy film."

Paltrow has endured a year of grief after her father, Bruce, passed away last October. However, she insisted reports that the loss has left her clinically depressed are wide of the mark.

"I am not clinically depressed," she said. "There is a difference between clinical depression, which I believe is more chemical, and being depressed about an external factor which is impacting your life. Since my father died it has made me redesign the way I see so many things. My life and my work. When he died it changed my perspective completely - I realised how finite life is."