Every year around my birthday, I drop lots of hints that I’d love a collection of DVDs of all of Gwyneth Paltrow’s movies. I love her work, I love her fashion sense, I love the way she handles fame and success with grace and class.

I still don’t have the collection (I know, I know, DVDs are expensive… and she’s done a LOT of movies). But this week I received a much greater gift: the chance to meet Paltrow in person.

But with opportunity, comes risk. Several worries ran through my mind:

–What if she’s mean to me? The experience could haunt me throughout every Paltrow flick for the rest of my life!
–What if I humiliate myself in front of her? Again, another too-painful-to-forget scenario.
–What if I do a bad interview and come back to FOX News with nothing worth reporting? (OK, I have this fear before every interview, so this one is nothing new).

As I walked into the junket room at NYC’s Waldorf-Astoria, Gwyneth looked up with a huge smile. She greeted me with such enthusiasm that it seemed like she was overjoyed to meet me. (Great acting, I know, but I totally fell for it). Her warm demeanor immediately put me at ease. From there, the interview was smooth sailing.

Check out the clip to see for yourself.

Some of her statements ended up on the editing room floor, so I’ll share a couple of them with you here. Her film “Ironman,” in theatres May 2nd, is one of her first big films since having children Apple and Moses. She told me, “I had taken off a long time to be with my kids and when this came along it was just the right kind of thing that I was looking to do. Really good people, a good part, but not too big of a part because I didn’t want to be work 5 days a week, I thought that would be way too jarring for my kids. It was just like the perfect part for me.”

As Pepper Potts in “Ironman,” she had strawberry blonde hair. She told me it was wig and said, “I did enjoy being a redhead. I like doing something for a part that really changes the way I look.”

Overall, she gave me a great interview and openly answered my questions about her marriage, her kids and her famous friends. A great day at work for me, and now I’m a bigger Gwyneth fan than ever. (But let’s keep that between us – I like to give the impression of an unbiased journalist!)