Gwyneth looks better in stockings than me!

Paltrow leaves little to the imagination in new movie Thanks For Sharing.

Taking your clothes off for the world to see isn’t easy trust me. I once starred in The Rocky Horror Picture Show as Frank N Furter and, let me tell you, you haven’t lived until you’ve appeared in public wearing stockings, suspenders and not a lot else. I took over from Jason Donovan and we went through a full dress rehearsal together. I knew Jason from doing children’s telly years ago, and there was a moment when we were each wearing the full gear.

We looked at each other and Jason said: “Strewth Rossco, how did it come to this?”

Amazingly, dancing around in stockings is now something I have in common with Gwyneth Paltrow.

The Oscar-winning actress, cook, mother, style icon and wife to Coldplay frontman Chris Martin has a new movie out, called Thanks For Sharing. It’s a classy comedy drama in which she plays a sex addict opposite Avengers star Mark Ruffalo.

There are a couple of racy scenes in which she strips down to her lingerie. No doubt a few blokes were queuing up at the cinema doors when it came out on Friday, keen to get a glimpse of Gwyneth’s . . . Oscar-winning acting talents.

Just as the ladies queued up to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show when I starred in it. Or so my agent told me, at least.

I sat down for a chat with Gwyneth and she told me about her role as Phoebe, who struggles with relationships because of her addiction. Gwyneth was on great form and was very nice to us. It was first thing in the morning and, as usual, she looked gorgeous. I told her she managed to get everything into her role, and she quipped that it was indeed EVERYTHING. Not much is left to the imagination.

We chatted about how she had to prepare her rocker husband Chris Martin for her nude appearances on screen. Gwyneth asks Chris to read through every script she accepts to make sure it’s OK by him.

“He’s pretty relaxed about that kind of thing,” Gwyneth explained to me. “I normally ask him to read a script before I do it. He loves movies and he’s very smart about them.

“So that way he knows what’s going to happen beforehand. But I was nervous about doing it. It involved having to do a striptease scene in lingerie. I was very self-conscious, but it turned out OK, because Mark Ruffalo is so nice and he made it really easy to do.”

Gwyneth can’t be that shy about getting her kit off she was in the news last week for her new advert for Hugo Boss. In it, she wears a tuxedo jacket with nothing on underneath.

Gwyneth lived in London for more than a decade with Chris, and she told me she misses the UK. “I still think of England as my home I was there for 11 years,” she added. “I haven’t mentally transferred my home to Los Angeles yet!

“I think we’ll go back to see family and friends. We’ll be there a lot. It’s important to me to maintain family life in the UK as well as in Los Angeles. I don’t plan on being away long enough to miss it.”

Gwyneth isn’t exactly known for starring in edgier films like this, and there’s obviously a bit of a stigma attached to starring in a movie about sex addiction. That was something I asked her about, and she told me she carried out some research into the part.

“I think there is a stigma,” she said. “When I was learning about what sex addiction was, I found out that it was actually a real thing. People use it to feel better and to get an adrenaline high the same way addicts use drugs.”

This really is a bit of a different role for Gwyneth, with a lot more flesh on display than we’re used to seeing from her, but I told her she needn’t worry. Trust me she looks incredible.

“Thanks, I work very hard,” she laughed. “I work out for an hour and 45 minutes, five days a week. There’s nothing free in life!”

Too true. I’m still struggling to lose the weight I put on over the summer. The summer of 2006, that is!