Faces of the week

Our regular look at some of the faces which have made the news this week. Above are Gwyneth Paltrow (main picture), with (clockwise from top left) KEITH RICHARDS, PHILIP GREEN, DAVID HEMMINGS and MONICA ALI.

Babies have been known to melt the hardest heart, but Gwyneth Paltrow's confirmation that she and her partner, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, are expecting a child next summer may not be enough to melt the cynics' hearts.

Paltrow's speech in accepting a best actress Oscar for Shakespeare in Love is arguably remembered better than the performance which won her the award.

Her deluge of tears provided more fuel for the critics who've sniped at her ever since she became a major name.

"I'd had a really difficult year," she explained later. "My father had been sick, my grandfather was dying and there was a lot of upheaval in my life."

My heart sort of broke that day Gwyneth Paltrow on splitting from Brad Pitt

But the golden girl's apparent vulnerability has tended to attract sneers rather than sympathy.

Paltrow continues to be puzzled by the barbrous comments levelled at her.

"I always hear that people's perception of me is that I'm cool or aloof or standoffish, but I don't think I'm a chilly person at all."

It was her Academy Award-winning role in Shakespeare in Love that seemed to encourage her detractors. There were stories of temper tantrums on set and of Dame Judi Dench's annoyance at Paltrow's alleged diva-like behaviour.

But those critics who contended that she owed her fame to a film actress mother, Blythe Danner, and director-producer father, Bruce Paltrow, or to dating two of Hollywood's most desirable men, Brad Pitt and Ben Affleck, have been subdued by a string of impressive Paltrow performances.

Gwyneth Paltrow making THAT Oscar speech

Not to mention her flawless English accent in Emma and Sliding Doors and her startlingly good singing in Duets.

While she has been likened to one of her screen roles, the ice princess Estella in Great Expectations, Paltrow's broken romances have led to many more tears.

When she split up with Pitt, she said "something changed, permanently, in me...my heart sort of broke that day, and it will never be the same".

And the heartache of her father's death from cancer shortly before she started filming Sylvia, the biopic of tragic poet Sylvia Plath, added another dimension to the emotional intensity of the role.

But two years ago, declaring that she loved men, "even though they're lying, cheating scumbags," she said she wanted someone who was "artistic, with lots of integrity" and who didn't have to "grab all the attention".

Now she is pregnant by a man who shuns publicity and whom, as she indicated on BBC One's Parkinson show, she hopes to marry. Chris Martin wrote his band's anthem, God Put a Smile Upon Your Face. Cue more tears?

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Keith Richards Keith Richards let His Satanic Majesty have it with both barrels over Mick Jagger's acceptance of an invitation to the Palace to accept a knighthood. "I don't want to step out on stage with someone wearing a coronet and sporting the old ermine," declared Richards, at 59 a year younger than Jagger, but looking a century older. Still trying to distance himself from the Establishment, Richards said: "It's not what the Stones is about." Full story

Philip Green Billionaire Philip Green paid a new record price for sporting memorabilia by shelling out half a million pounds for an England Rugby World Cup final shirt - only to discover it hadn't seen any action. It belonged not to Ben Kay, as first thought, but to reserve hooker Dorian West, who generously offered it for auction by the Rainbow Trust charity. In view of what happened to many of the figure-hugging shirts Down Under, Green's being advised to treat his gingerly.

David Hemmings David Hemmings, who died of a heart attack, became a 60s icon after starring in Michelangelo Antonioni's film portrayal of "swinging" London, Blow Up. At nine, he was a professional soprano, but it was cinema that claimed him, while his high-profile girlfriends and hell-raising also made headlines. Hemmings then spent many years working for American television, before being rediscovered by the film world, appearing in Gladiator and Gangs of New York. Full story

Monica Ali Monica Ali's Booker-nominated first novel, Brick Lane, was branded a "despicable insult" to Bangladeshis living in the area in the East End of London. Community leaders said they didn't recognise the "stereotypical view" of people living "like rats in their holes." But Booker judge DJ Taylor said Ali's book was a work of fiction, portraying "warm and intimate relationships in mostly a sympathetic way". Full story