A month after its release, Belle Burden’s memoir, “Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage” has become arguably the most talked about book in Hollywood and it’s close to landing Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow to play Burden herself, Page Six Hollywood has learned.
Fresh off her Screen Actors Guild Award nomination as part of the cast of “Marty Supreme,” Paltrow is said to be circling the project which is being repped by UTA and is based on a book that grew out of an essay Burden wrote for The New York Times’ Modern Love column. (A separate source told P6H that it is still early in the development process and that Paltrow isn’t the only A-list actress interested, so there’s that).
The story centers on Burden’s 20-year marriage and her husband’s abrupt decision to walk out on her and their children in 2020 for another woman near the start of the pandemic.
The book, which is currently No. 2 on the The New York Times nonfiction list, has sparked a cultural conversation certainly among female readers.
And while the content of the two books are quite different, there are some similarities to how “Strangers” has struck a similar chord as Miranda July’s 2024 novel “All Fours.” (“All Fours,” to be clear, is a much racier tale. It’s currently being developed as a TV series by Starz).
Burden is a Harvard-educated lawyer who was born into exceptional privilege. Her father was Carter Burden, a descendant of the Vanderbilts while her maternal grandmother was socialite Babe Paley.
A spokesperson for Paltrow did get back to P6H.
