Cracker Jack With Coldplay

Cracker Jack With Coldplay

Cool Customer: Aidin Vaziri | Chris Martin probably doesn't host too many dinner parties these days, but he really should. Before an hourlong interview at a hotel room in the Clift, the Coldplay singer thoughtfully pulls back the drapes to reveal the San Francisco skyline. He pulls the chairs close together and rearranges the pillows on the sofa for greatest comfort. And when he discovers the key for the minibar is missing, he starts pulling out consolation refreshments: Toblerone bars, breath mints, Cracker Jack. Somebody missed Martha Stewart while she was locked up. He's so well-mannered, it's hard to remember he's the front man for the band whose previous album, 2002's "A Rush of Blood to the Head," sold nearly 10 million copies worldwide. By now, Green Day would have turned the TV into a trampoline and the bed into a second bathroom. Yet Martin, like most 28-year-old men who wake up and find themselves in one of the biggest bands in the universe and married to Gwyneth Paltrow, doesn't exactly know how he should behave. "With us, it's always such a fine line between extreme self-confidence and extreme doubt," he says, tapping his fingers on the coffee table and adjusting his tall, gangly frame into a ball on the couch. "Size is nothing. McDonald's has shifted billions of burgers, but that doesn't make them good."