Chris Martin on Marriage to Gwyneth Paltrow: She's a 'Great Beard for Me'

Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow have been married for a decade, but they're still not willing to talk about each other and their personal life when promoting separate projects. The same happened during his appearance on Ellen DeGeneres the other day.

The interview with Ellen came just hours after word got out online that Martin hung up on a radio talk show host after he asked him questions about his wife: he didn't say anything, he just let out a sigh and hung up.

On Ellen, the singer tries humor when avoiding too personal questions: instead of refusing to answer them directly, he uses one of the most frequent jokes about his orientation to deflect it, as the video below will confirm.

“You don’t talk about Gwyneth a lot,” Ellen tells Martin. “But you have a great relationship and two precious kids. And we love Gwyneth. She’s been here many times,” she adds.

To this, Chris replies that Gwyneth has been his “beard” for the past 10 years – and a great one while at it.

“She’s been a great beard for me now, for 10 years,” he says.

“Is that right? It’s not really a real relationship? She just pretends that she’s your wife,” Ellen pushes the issue, going along for the joke.

“Yeah, it’s hard to believe,” Martin adds laughing, probably hoping the talk show host would drop the subject at it. But Ellen is relentless when she wants to get something out of her guests.

“I know that this is your first relationship… So, really before you were in a relationship with Gwyneth. You didn’t have a serious relationship at all? What was the longest relationship you were in before Gwyneth?” she asks.

“I think a lot of people like me and Jonny [Buckland] join bands because we were really not doing so well... With men, with women... With anybody,” the singer further says.

He then goes on to joke that actually his longest relationship is not with his “pretend-wife” / beard, but with bandmate Jonny, with whom he's been with for the past 15 years – 14, if you ask Jonny.

“I don’t understand how you can forget our anniversary. It’s actually 15 years this week,” Chris admonishes Jonny, to the delight of the audience.