GWYNETH BITES BACK
‘I have nothing to hide’
‘I don’t care if people like me’
THE ACTRESS IS UNAPOLOGETIC ABOUT WHERE SHE’S AT IN LIFE
These days, the name Gwyneth Paltrow is synonymous with one of the most unattainable Hollywood lifestyles.
So why exactly is Gwyneth the woman that others love to hate? It’s something that the woman herself can’t understand.
“I remember being like, ‘Really? More than, like, Chris Brown? Me? Really? Wow,’” she says after recalling how she saw herself called the most hated celebrity in the world on the cover of a magazine.
“It was also the same week that I was People magazine’s Most Beautiful Woman,” she tells. “For a minute I was like, ‘Wait, I don’t understand. Am I hated to the bone or am I the world’s most beautiful?’”
Love or loathe her, no-one can deny the success that continues to build for Gwyneth (45) in both her personal and professional life.
Her world could be described as “aspirational”, and that’s exactly the way she wants it.
Her lifestyle and wellbeing business Goop, which started out simply as an email newsletter sent from her kitchen in 2008, is now worth nearly
$370 million and sells anything from pseudo-health advice such as vaginal steaming to wearable stickers supposed to improve your health, facial oils and a $66 jade egg to balance female hormones.
She’s also known to come out with some outrageous clangers that further remove her from everyday society, including, “I would rather die than let my kid eat Cup-a-Soup,” and, “I’d rather smoke crack than eat cheese from a tin.”
To put it simply, Gwyneth is playing her own game. The Goop lifestyle she peddles to her loyal followers, with special weekend-long summits costing thousands of dollars to attend, is constantly under scrutiny, but this doesn’t appear to bother the Shakespeare in Love star, who reveals the company didn’t want to fact-check their work because it was “old school” and that it doesn’t claim to make statements.
“It’s crucial to me that we remain aspirational,” she says. “Not in price point because content is always free. Our stuff is beautiful. The ingredients are beautiful. You can’t get that at a lower price. You can’t make these things mass-market.”
But aside from business, Gwyneth is also gearing up to marry her producer partner Brad Falchuk, who she met on the set of the musical television show Glee back in 2010, with the pair beginning to date in 2014. Rumours are mounting the couple are set to tie the knot in an intimate ceremony in the Hamptons in September.
The impending second marriage comes after her now infamous “conscious uncoupling” with former husband, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, with whom she has two children, Apple (14) and Moses (12). The term, coined by Gwyneth, saw her mercilessly mocked.
“I was really saying we’re in a lot of pain, we failed at this; we’re going to try and do it in a different way,” she says, explaining she didn’t expect the vitriol that followed.
“I think that was an instance where it really hit me that an insouciance with language from me is different than from somebody else.” And in true Gwyneth form, she has revealed that despite posting images of her exhusband and new fiancé hanging out together, and gushing about her modern family, the divorce wasn’t as smooth as she made out.
“I’m actually the only one in my life who has gotten divorced,” she tells.
“This used to feel like a failure − it took me a while to reframe that divorce isn’t a failure.”
While they are a happy family now, Gwyneth has divulged that she thinks her relationship with Brad is her “first adult relationship”, telling that he challenges her in a way her marriage with Chris never did.
“It’s such a crazy game of
chance because who knows if you’re going to grow in parallel, if your paths are going to diverge or what’s going to happen,” she says.
But despite what the world thinks of her, Gwyneth is drowning the noise out.
Criticise her business or relationship? She doesn’t care.
“A friend told me if you’re a trailblazer, you’re the first one through, and you get the cuts because you’re hacking the path,” she says.
And for her, it all comes down to believing in herself and following the path she believes she was meant to take – even if that means encouraging people to purposely get stung by bees for great skin.
“I’ve gotten to a point where I like myself,” she says.
“I do my best as a person. I also have nothing to hide.”