Blythe Danner: Gwyneth Paltrow has kept her family together - in the best way

Blythe Danner is telling me how her daughter — Gwyneth Paltrow — keeps encouraging her to be more open to meeting new men. “She says, ‘Mum: you’re never going to find another person like Dad, so don’t even try. Don’t just look for somebody who’s funny like Dad was’.” The 73-year-old smiles: “But I think I’d like a dog instead of a man.”

The actress’s husband, director Bruce Paltrow, died in 2002. In her new film, I’ll See You In My Dreams, she plays a widow, Carol, who starts dating again. She drew on her experience of loss — “I had a lot to call on” — but it’s a line from another character: “When you’ve had the best, who cares for the rest?” that most resonated with Danner. “It’s true in my case because my husband was extraordinary. He was just right-across- the-board perfect.”

I meet her in a suite in the Dorchester. An insomniac, she’s sipping a coffee with cream on the side — “I’m still waking up” — and asks after the hotel’s cookies: “The sugar will help!” As we sit down on squidgy sofas I tell her that I loved the film. She asks me to repeat myself, as though she’s missed what I said. I do. “Oh, good, good. I just wanted you to say it twice.”

Part of the film’s appeal is that it’s a rare portrayal of pensioner passion. “Why do people think it’s so strange that older people can have romance?” she muses. “It didn’t feel odd at all.” I suggest there’s a horrible assumption in our society that older people don’t have sex. “Oh, I don’t think it’s a horrible assumption,” she responds, generously. “People don’t give it much thought, and when they do they recoil with ‘urgh, those old people are doing that?’” She screws up her face in mock disgust. “But it’s probably less so now.”

There’s a wonderful scene in the film where Carol goes speed-dating. Danner has been on blind dates herself but nothing has stuck. “Dating doesn’t have much appeal. I would love somebody just to show up who I thought was swell, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. The idea of speed-dating and online dating is horrifying.”

That said, her advice to others her age is not to hide away. “We tend to keep to ourselves. I do. I have to be careful because I’m kind of a loner. I have great friends but I don’t mind spending time by myself.”

Despite having had her Equity card for more than 50 years, I’ll See You in My Dreams is Danner’s first lead film role: “the best anniversary celebration I could have”. When she was younger she had combined theatre and having children — a somewhat easier mix than movies and motherhood: “I pulled back after the children came along because I didn’t want anyone else to raise them.”

Was Gwyneth forced to make a similar decision? “Yes, and it aggrieves me because I think she’s extraordinary. Gwyneth has such a capacity to capture the essence of a character in the blink of the eye. My hope is that when the children are older she will come back to acting because it’s the essence of her talent.”

Parental pride is a theme of the interview — whether it’s about Gwyneth’s lifestyle brand Goop (“She’s an extraordinary businesswoman”), her cooking (“She and her father were wonderful in the kitchen together — and I was always washing up) or her parenting (“She’s read everything and raised the children with this wonderful wisdom”).

It even extends to her ex-son-in-law Chris Martin. Gwyneth and Martin split — or rather “consciously uncoupled” — in 2014. Danner feels they have set a new way of being parents after a marriage fails. “It’s wonderful. Conscious uncoupling absolutely works. I am so proud of them both.”

Did she know what the phrase meant at first? “I thought, ‘What’s this?’ But I was just knocked out at how effective it is. Everything is about keeping the family whole in the best way you can when you’re separating. They’ve learned the trick.” She says they still do Christmas and other holidays as a family.

If Gwyneth does make that full return to acting Danner believes there will be better parts than there once were for actresses the “wrong” side of 40. “This year we’ve seen a plethora of even older women doing the great roles. I think we’ll see more and more because look at the population of baby-boomers: there’s just such a need for entertainment for our age group.”

One thing that could challenge the wider “invisibility” of older women, I say, would be the election of Hillary Clinton. Danner, a Clinton supporter, is only too happy to put on her political pundit hat. “It will be wonderful if she gets in. I feel dreadful that there’s such a strong Right-wing ever since the Tea Party, which is abhorrent to me, and they’re making it so difficult for her, and in general.”

She also thinks some voters are overlooking how revolutionary electing Clinton would be. “We have terrible healthcare in our country, and she — more than 20 years ago — tried hard to revolutionise the healthcare system and was stopped in her tracks. She has experience that nobody else has, and I cannot get over her spirit: she gets knocked down and the next day there she is. I would never be able to do that.”

Danner admires Obama too “because the Right wing of our country is doing us in. We’re the laughing stock. Look at Donald Trump! I think we’ll all move if he gets elected.”

I suggest she could come here. “You have really strict rules. You don’t want a lot of people here that aren’t British, I think. And it’s got worse, I’m sure, because of the refugee problems.”

Danner is fearless about wading into contentious issues, whether it’s arguing the US should take more Syrian and Iraqi refugees, or the “OscarsSoWhite” ruckus: “I voted for people of colour and I thought it was dreadful that some of these really wonderful films — Straight Outta Compton and Beasts of No Nation — were overlooked. I thought they were great. So I’m very much in favour of broadening the membership.”

BUT it is environmentalism that’s her true calling — including opposing GM crops. “I’ve always sought out organic food. When she was a baby, I put Gwyneth on organic food after I finished nursing.” The pair went to Washington last year to lobby for the labelling of GM food. “With our Right-wing Congress, it’s been hard. The herbicides and pesticides in vegetables and fruits are extraordinarily riddled with toxins, so — if you can afford it — you really have to buy organic.”

Both Gwyneth and her director brother Jake have a daughter and a son and being a grandmother has fuelled Danner’s environmentalism, as being a mother did before. “I’m so worried about the little ones now — they face a frightening world.”

She adores being a grandmother, though. “I’m a terrible grandmother in that my children would like to choke me sometimes. I do love spoiling them. Not that I do it to excess, but I just adore them. It restores you to your youth I love being on all-fours on the floor.” She looks wistful. “I see my husband in my grandsons and the girls. It’s just extraordinarily moving to me that we do goes on and on through our children.”