Gwyneth Paltrow Recalls Being Told ‘Iron Man’ Would “Feel Like Doing An Indie Film”: “We Improvised Almost Every Scene Of That Movie”

Gwyneth Paltrow says she was told that Iron Man was “going to feel like doing an indie film.”

According to Rolling Stone, Paltrow discussed this at the Red Sea Film Festival, explaining that “the first film [they] did was very different from the rest because the studio didn’t think it was going to be a big hit,” per Entertainment Weekly.

Noting that they had “hired Jon Favreau to direct who was great,” as well as “Robert Downey Jr., who was un-hireable at the time,” she recalled being told they were “gonna have fun,” and that she wouldn’t “have to be in too much of the action part anyway.”

“So I thought, ‘Oh, okay.’ And we had such a good time,” she said. “We improvised almost every scene of that movie. We would write it in the morning in Jon’s trailer, and it was like doing [an indie] film. Then, the movie was such a huge hit that we didn’t make them like that anymore.”

Following the 2008 release of Iron Man, Paltrow has appeared as Pepper Potts in five MCU films, per IMDb, the last of which being Avengers: Endgame, which she revealed she’s “never seen.”

“I’ve never seen any of these,” she said. “I can’t keep track. I probably should at some point.”

According to Variety, during an Instagram Q & A in August, Paltrow told fans who were curious as to why she has not appeared as Potts in recent MCU films to “call up Marvel and yell at them, not [her].”

“We just stopped doing it because Iron Man died,” she explained. “And, why do you need Pepper Potts without Iron Man? I don’t know.”

More recently, Paltrow told Entertainment Tonight that while ” it would be very hard for [her] to do any acting right at the moment” due to her job, she admitted, “I guess Robert Downey Jr. could probably always get me back.”

Iron Man is streaming on Disney+.