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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about movies and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the movie urban legends featured so far.

MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: Gwyneth Paltrow had an interesting approach to a radio contest revolving around her.

In 2003, actress Gwyneth Paltrow was in New Zealand filming a movie about Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath (originally titled Ted and Sylvia, it eventually was released as just Sylvia).

While driving to the film set one day, the star was listening to the radio. A local radio station was running a sort of “Star Stalker” game. They would give away $100 for a photograph of Paltrow, $1,000 for a pair of knickers stolen from her hotel room or $5,000 if they could get Paltrow to actually come to the phone and speak live on-air.

Well, Paltrow figured, why not play along?

So when she arrived at set, she found a young worker on the set (accounts differ on how she chose the young man – one version says she checked around to see who was paid the least on the set, I find that one a little hard to believe, while another version says that she had a particular production assistant in mind from the get go, I think that sounds more plausible) named Nathan, and the two of them called in the radio station and voila, we had a winner!

Paltrow raved to the radio station about how much she was enjoying her time in New Zealand, and she talked about what a hard worker young Nathan was.

Isn’t that an awesome thing for her to do?

The legend is…

STATUS: True

Thanks to The Mirror for the information on the situation.

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is bcronin@legendsrevealed.com.