Dont Call Her a Trophy Wife

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Cassandra Huysentruyt Grey in a video for Italian Vogue that began with text reading "Meet the Princess of Bel-Air."

By BROOKS BARNES

Published: April 6, 2012

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WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif.

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Axel Koester for The New York Times

Cassandra Huysentruyt Grey in her studio in West Hollywood.

IN "The Help," the hit book and movie about white Southern women and their black maids, Celia Foote is a twangy sweetie pie who marries rich and attempts (with painful eagerness) to fit in with the town's blue-blooded biddies. She gets a nose full of splinters from their slammed doors.

Change a few details and you have Cassandra Huysentruyt Grey, the pretty young second wife of Brad Grey , the chairman and chief executive of Paramount Pictures.

Mrs. Grey's opulent wedding one year ago, attended by Hollywood royals like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, made her an official member of moviedom's AAA-list, with West Coast homes in Bel-Air and Holmby Hills. A New York perch comes via a recently purchased $15.5-million apartment at the Carlyle .

But don't call her a trophy wife. Mrs. Grey may have a Lilliputian figure, but she has big ambitions for a fashion studio and vintage clothing line that she runs from this town's trendy shopping district.

How big? Asked that question the other day, she picked up a copy of Salvador Dali's 1942 autobiography, "The Secret Life of Salvador Dali," and pointed to a passage: "At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since."

If she was joking, it sure didn't seem that way. Mrs. Grey had even taped a blown-up photocopy of the paragraph to her office wall — a type of mission statement.

It's this kind of did-she-just-say-that? candor that has popped claws in show business society, which plays faster and looser than old-money circles in New York or even Pasadena, but still has unspoken rules of propriety. One is that ambition from mogul wives, unless it's for charity or political fund-raising, is best kept hidden. Another involves public perception. You may live a lavish life (stars, yachts, red carpets), but you work overtime not to appear as filthy rich as you are.

Flirting with Tinseltown clichés? Unspeakable.

Whether it's because she doesn't care, thinks she knows a better way or simply hasn't yet learned, Mrs. Grey in many ways has not played that game. The gossipy movie world's eyebrows started to arch soon after she started publicly dating Mr. Grey in 2008. There was chattering in particular about a party at the Cannes Film Festival where she was seen as being overly flirtatious with Steven Spielberg. Some players were also suspicious of the friendship she formed with Sue Mengers, the agent and Hollywood hostess .

Before Ms. Mengers died last year, Mrs. Grey became a confidante. But some members of Ms. Mengers's inner circle say it appeared as if Mrs. Grey were studying the older woman. "I definitely pursued Sue," Mrs. Grey said. " I really, really miss her."

And then there is The Video. In December, Italian Vogue posted on its Web site an over-the-top video profile of Mrs. Grey. It began with text reading "Meet the Princess of Bel-Air" and depicted her as a self-involved one-percenter riding in a chauffeured sedan and fixated on what to wear while walking the dog.

"I'm taking my role as a wife and a lover and a stepmother very seriously, meaning I want to be really, really good at it," she said to the camera, sitting on a bathroom counter in a short robe and smoking a cigarette in a Marlene Dietrich pose, her makeup heavy and her head wrapped in a red scarf.

The video landed in a who's who of in-boxes (David Geffen, half of William Morris Endeavor) to the point that The Los Angeles Times declared it " the hottest new film in Hollywood. " Some studio executives started quoting from it as they would a "Saturday Night Live" sketch.

"Contrived" is how a mortified Mrs. Grey, 34, now describes her video. "It did not turn out like I expected," she said, taking a nervous sip of Fiji Water. "But I'm not afraid of creative mistakes, and I'm sure I'll make more of them." Of the people mocking her, she said, "I really don't have any time for toxicity."

Mr. Grey, 54, maintains a tightly controlled public image, and Hollywood has been clucking with speculation that he winced at his wife's faux pas. In an e-mail, Mr. Grey struck a rolling-with-the-punches tone, saying he comforted Mrs. Grey by telling her, "when you make content, you try things, and they don't always work. You learn from it and figure out what's next."

Mr. Grey, whose producing credits include "The Sopranos," added: "My wife is a wonderful combination of creative spirit, optimism, intelligence, humor and beauty. I know her talent and hard work will continue to produce fabulous results."

The clip recently disappeared from Italian Vogue's site. "We removed the video because we usually respect our interviewee, and Cassandra told us she is much more of a behind-the-scenes person," a spokeswoman for the magazine, Laura Piva, wrote in an e-mail.

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This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 8, 2012

An earlier version of this story misspelled the name and address of a Web site. It is NewYorkSocialDiary.com, not NewYorkSocialDairy.com.

Theo www.nytimes.com