Who'll be the new West End girl?

This is going to be a confusing summer for Londoners. We have simultaneously received two gifts, one possibly from the Good Fairy, one possibly not. They take the form of the two most instantly recognisable actresses in town - Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Not only do these icons now live in London, they are both appearing in our theatres this week. Anybody with any street cred will be required in a matter of weeks to have an opinion on who is best. So pretty quickly, we Londoners need to articulate feelings that we have only held until now in our subconscious - that we love Madonna (after three years, we see her as one of us now) and we hate Gwyneth. Why?

Well, Madonna famously sang goodbye to Miss American Pie, but she embodies the glowing (and all too often mythical) hope suggested by the American Dream. This is the America we all want to support. Madonna isn't just from the wrong side of the tracks - she knows no limits of class or 'taste'. Her grandparents were Italian peasants who stepped off a boat in New York City with nothing but a determination to work hard, and boy did their granddaughter pick it up. And she needed it. Her mother died of breast cancer when she was just five, and her dad married again, to a woman Madonna hated and feared.

She often had to skank meals from friends just to get by, and even survived a horrific rape when she was just 19. Yet at no point has Madonna seen herself as a victim. With willpower and talent, the girl from Nowheresville made herself into the biggest star on the planet, in circumstances where most of us would have crawled into a hole and died.

She was perfect casting as Eva Per?n in Evita because both women had to work every second of their lives to achieve success. With no famous parents to ensure she glided softly into success, Madonna had to carefully plan every step of her career in minute detail. Every night, she makes a detailed list of her aims for the next day. None of the factors in her success have come about by accident. For example, the brilliance of so many visual images of her comes from her many years of carefully and methodically studying photographs and paintings. She is so tough on herself that in her early twenties, when she was training to be a dancer in New York City, she would punish herself by banging her head against the wall if she couldn't perform the right steps. She never whinges or pities herself.

And Gwyneth? Dear, beautiful, ball-achingly boring Gwyneth? She is the American reality, the truth that nine times out of ten lies behind the Dream. Gwyneth was born into the American acting aristocracy with a silver Oscar in her mouth. Her greatest struggle in life has been to quit snogging Brad Pitt (stop that crying at the back, please).

In contrast to Madonna, Gwyneth's opportunities have been handed to her on a Hollywood Hills souvenir plate. Her father is leading producer-director Bruce Paltrow, and her mother is the Tony-winning actress Blythe Danner. She grew up calling Steven Spielberg 'Uncle Monty'. Her family connections must have helped her land roles from the age of five, and she became familiar with film sets by trailing her mother's gigs in movies such as The Great Santini with Robert Duvall. Gwyneth was raised to believe that all this, by right, was hers.

Gwyneth's parents enrolled her in the absurdly expensive Spence School, a training ground for the USA's de facto aristocracy. She was chauffeured from the opera to art galleries, and ended up 'earning' a place studying art history at the University Of California. When she was 18 she starred opposite her mother on stage. It's hard to believe that her family roles didn't help her win the role of Wendy in Spielberg's Hook. She later was cast in her father's movie Duets. At every step of her career, Paltrow appears to have called on the very advantages that Madonna has so sorely lacked.

If Gwyneth had been forced to compete with other actresses, she might have had to work harder. Instead, she has got away with being a one-dimensional actress, buoyed by the confidence that comes from being raised from birth as if she were a star.

That confidence, though, doesn't stop her painting herself as a victim despite having every conceivable advantage. She posed naked for Harper's Bazaar then whimpered when they showed an inch more bum cleavage than she expected. She complained when she was cast in three big movies in a row that 'it was a lot to deal with' and sulked in bed for ten days after her Oscar win, complaining that 'I just felt exposed and embarrassed'. She moaned that 'when everybody was saying "She's the next thing!", I wasn't getting any jobs.' She has even bad-mouthed movies she's been given parts in if they don't go her way ? she was asked about the film Hush just after the end of shooting and she said, 'Ughhh. I don't know what you're talking about. I've never heard of that.'