Gwyneth Paltrow didn’t know who Tom Holland was despite making several movies with him, according to an anecdote by Robert Downey Jr.
The Iron Man star paid tribute to Paltrow on Wednesday (December 3) at The Hollywood Reporter’s 2025 ‘Women in Entertainment’ breakfast gala at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles, where she was receiving an award for leadership.
In a humorous moment in the speech (via The Hollywood Reporter), Downey described his co-star as “impossibly intelligent, yet forever confused by the basic tenets of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its inhabitants”.
“’Who’s that?’” the actor recalled Paltrow once asking, to which he jokingly responded, “‘That’s Spider-Man’. ‘He said his name was Peter’. ‘His character’s name is Peter. He’s Tom Holland. You’ve done four movies with him.’”
"but forever confused by the basic tenants of the marvel universe and it's inhabitants"
not rdj roasting gwyneth for forgetting who spiderman is lol pic.twitter.com/0hRtdxRV2w
— ִ (@drdoomarchive) December 4, 2025
Paltrow has played Pepper Potts, Tony Stark’s (Downey) business partner and eventual wife, in seven MCU movies so far. The character has appeared in all three Iron Man movies, three Avengers films and 2016’s Spider-man: Homecoming. She is also rumoured to be in the forthcoming Avengers Doomsday.
Despite this, she has been on record several times for not knowing much about the wider Marvel Universe, or her place in it. In 2019, co-star Jon Favreau had to remind her that they both appeared together in Spider-Man: Homecoming, a film she later admitted she’d never seen or was previously aware she was in.
Marvel chief Kevin Feige also recalled a time she was filming the famous funeral scene in Avengers Endgame, and being unaware Samuel L Jackson was in the Marvel Universe despite playing one of its most frequent characters.
Outside of The MCU, Gwyneth Paltrow has only made sporadic acting appearances in the last few years, instead focusing on her wellness brand Goop. Her forthcoming sports drama, Marty Supreme, will be her first non-Marvel movie role since 2015’s Mortdecai.