National Diplomat: Gwyneth Paltrow is hardly an enigma. We might feel that we intimately know the actress and businesswoman due to her crystal “healing” eggs and vagina-shaped candles. Much like her latest Astronomer’s “clever PR move” US advertisement.
Most recently, for over thirty years, the public has grown to both love and loathe her due to her relationships and “conscious uncoupling” with Chris Martin, and tearful award shows. A public figure, she also narrowly survived Weinstein’s publicized advances and has starred in a ski crash trial. A recently published book explores further: Gwyneth Paltrow: The Biography, detailing her life and persona.
From the hurtful comments of “I can’t possibly pretend to be someone who makes twenty-five thousand a year,” someone who skis for recreation, her public persona fractures. Gwyneth Gwyneth, with her acid tongue and prickly sense of humor, seems to be jesting and smirking when spewing these quite real pronouncements. Most of what she’s said is alleged. She seems to be utopian in her wishing, echoing sentiments, “If you know, you know,” quintessential of the in-crowd.
“Gwyneth has, to her extraordinary credit, found a way to be even more annoying,” the Guardian said when Goop launched in 2008. Goop marked the start of a new chapter in Gwyneth Paltrow’s life, one that comes with unprecedented levels of fame.
Even for the skeptical, the backlash from health professionals was fierce, with many adamantly opposing the claims made by Goop and Paltrow. After the Netflix release of The Goop Lab, a documentary on Paltrow’s business, NHS chief Simon Stevens branded the Goop brand “quacks, charlatans and cranks”, to the health and dubbed “unlicensed health professionals”.
In that same interview, Paltrow offered a defense of sorts, responding to the backlash with a casual shrug. “I will never understand the level of fascination and projection. But we don’t want to change the conversation just to please everybody,” and added that there have always been “unlicensed health measures” for over “thousands of years”, so they outrank a scientific rationale.
Regardless, Paltrow understands her marketability very well. Just last week, she was called upon to help implement a PR campaign for Astronomer after a dramatic incident where a couple, who happened to be employees of the AI company, tried to duck out of the frame at a Coldplay concert. SmartCompany has since labeled it ‘an iconic PR turnaround’. Paltrow delivers the demure take-no-sh*t attitude the ads conjure beautifully, as she did in the ski court trial.
Over the Top
Paltrow is cited as “one of the most resented celebrities in the world” in journalist Amy Odell’s book. Although Gwyneth Paltrow did not take part in the project, Odell interviewed more than 220 friends, colleagues, and industry insiders to tell the story of how this waifish blonde actress evolved into a single, unmistakable name.
Odell published the biography of Anna Wintour in 2022, and it was called Anna: The Biography. Wintour and Paltrow share certain parallels, and both are ambitious, larger-than-life figures, so it is not hard to understand why Odell’s interests were piqued.
The author was intrigued by the ambition each woman had, as it was both interesting and impactful to them. For instance, Odell stated, “I think ambition is a great thing, and that’s a trait I admire greatly in both of them.” Odell later states, “I wondered if that’s why Gwyneth downplayed her ambition early in her career.” Odell makes it clear that she believes both women had ambition and the will to accomplish cultural feats.
As for Paltrow, it is clear that she is is a woman with goals, as Odell states, “With Gwyneth, we see her ambition in the breadth of Goop” as she lists all that Goop covers from “a newsletter, a publishing imprint, a live events business, a beauty line, and a fashion line” showcasing her many goals.
Whether or not Paltrow is portrayed as an ice queen, her friends are here to tell us otherwise. Shaman Durek, a friend of Paltrow, says on the podcast Behind the Velvet Rope with David Yontef that the ice queen label was “all lies.”
“Of all people, she will give you the shirt off her back,” He continued, “It takes a lot for her to get angry. But if she does, she’s sad about it because she doesn’t want to be angry. Even in anger, she’s trying to be loving.” He then stated, “Gwyneth is the most loving person.”
Paltrow is also a victim of overestimation. One of the most talented actresses of her time, Paltrow is best known for her extensive relationships with Hollywood heartthrobs, which seemed to amplify the attention she received. Even before the biography’s publication, it seemed that the tabloids couldn’t get enough of republishing excerpts about her relationships with Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck, and Chris Martin.
Like father, like daughter?
Some call Paltrow a “nepo baby.” Her father, Bruce Paltrow, was a renowned producer for shows like Hill Street Blues, and her mother, Blythe Danner, is an accomplished actress, known for her role in Meet the Parents and many other films.
Gwyneth Paltrow went to theaters as a child, and her gigs consisted of auditioning, rehearsing, and hours on set. Her determination was on the Hollywood take. By the time she turned 26, she had won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love. Her emotionally-charged speech during the ceremony turned her into an enduring object of mockery.
That same year, The Guardian marked her as the “Worst Actress” in the “Worst Winner’s Speech Awards” compilation. Paltrow went on to claim in Variety that the “British press was so horrible to me” in an interview in 2023.
One of the highlights from Odell’s book is the close relationship between Bruce and Gwyneth as father and daughter. It was her father, as the book suggests, who instilled the notion of a sense of heightened privilege and ethereal expectations that Gwyneth grew up to embrace.
It was claimed that Bruce would sometimes fly first-class to work on films with Gwyneth and her brother, Jake, even when their mother Blythe, would be in economy. Odell’s book shares the story of Gwyneth boarding a plane with her mother and asking, “You mean instead of first class, we’re flying no class?”
“That is the reason why I tell the BBC, as a biographer, without understanding where someone came from, their ancestry, and how deeply their parents influenced them, it is not possible,” Odell said to the BBC. “I always interview people who knew a subject’s parents, and was lucky to learn a lot about Gwyneth in those interviews.”
Gwyneth is equally captivating, as her mother is a talented actress, and her father possesses a divisive yet remarkable taste and persona.
She was heartbroken when her father passed away due to cancer in 2002 at 58; Gwyneth lost Bruce at 30. It’s a shattering experience, Odell describes as a seismic event. She recalls, “I lost my dad suddenly, too, when I was 27. “It was a tremendous, unfathomable sorrow for which I wanted to explain the unexplainable.
Gwyneth sought reasons to explain her father’s diagnosis, which is something I relate to. For me, my dad’s throat cancer diagnosis was a hugely personal journey fraught with a lot of discomfort. I imagine Gwyneth sought those answers in wellness and later came to embrace sharing, without batting an eyelid, through her platform Goop, wellness solutions, validated or not by science.”
Gwyneth’s accomplishments and lifestyle choices were often put down as a result of her father’s connections or her celebrity partners. Nevertheless, it takes great entrepreneurial talent to build Goop into a multi-million-dollar lifestyle brand.
Regardless of being labeled a quack, perhaps she has been a victim of society’s unfortunate outlook towards women who succeed and thrive. People would likely flock towards Gwyneth: The Biography, expecting to find sensational snippets of a celebrity’s life. For that, they would be won and disappointed, thinking that the ice queen Gwyneth Paltrow is just as intricate as the rest of us.
Paltrow, not long ago, commented: “As a woman, you turn 50, and maybe we all give ourselves permission to be exactly who we are.” For the rest of us, whether we embrace her or not, Paltrow will always reside in the realm out of the scope of 99.9% of us. The enchanting view we wish to see of her will always go against reality.
