11 Awful Celeb Interviewees

In the wake of Rhys Ifans walking angrily out of an interview with the Times of London, the Guardian spoke to a few journalists about their worst encounters with celebrities:

• One reporter calls interviewing Gwyneth Paltrow "one of the low points of my life." Paltrow arrived at the interview directly from the bathroom and made the reporter shake her elbow rather than her hand, because her hands were wet; she went on to be "very haughty."
• Madonna canceled one interview on the day-of without giving a reason, and was "rude" at the rescheduled interview. "She didn't particularly acknowledge me and was rude to her assistant in front of me," the journalist recalls. And she only really wanted to talk about Kabbalah.
• Mila Kunis opened one interview—for a hefty cover story—with, "Could we wrap this up in 10 minutes?"

• At a press junket, Marion Cotillard spent most of one interview nibbling a piece of toast very slowly, and her team insisted that it count toward the 15-minute slot the interviewer had been given.
• At another press junket, Leonardo DiCaprio "kept everyone waiting for 10 hours, then turned up for about one minute," the interviewer recalls.
• Aretha Franklin made the reporter sit in front of a line of people including her boyfriend, a friend, her manager, and a PR person; her answers were monosyllables and the interviewer gave up after less than half an hour.

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