Hear Her Roar
Gwyneth Paltrow was destined for early fame after winning an Oscar in her twenties for Shakespeare in Love. Yet she has proven to be far more than just a Hollywood star: today she is a savvy businesswoman with her own thriving wellness brand, an active ph
“I’VE FOUND MORE COMFORT WITH MYSELF.”
GWYNETH PALTROW
For most celebrities, the ebb and flow of fame is commensurate with the profile of their latest project, but then Oscar-winning movie star-turnedlifestyle guru Gwyneth Paltrow could never be filed with ‘most celebrities’. She has, however, encountered myriad triumphs and failures, both personally and professionally, while somehow holding the public’s fascination, if not always its admiration, for decades.
We’ve witnessed the milestones of her much-publicised life beginning with her paparazzi-plagued engagement to Brad Pitt, when she was just 24. Despite the constant public scrutiny that sticks to her like a second skin, she is nothing if not fearless, and has made some rather unconventional decisions. Case in point; during her 13-year marriage to Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, there was much ado about their firstborn being named after a fruit. In hindsight, ‘Apple’ seems a rather mild choice in contrast to some of the more untenable names such as North West and Pilot Inspektor. And when she appropriated a therapist’s term, ‘conscious uncoupling’, rather than use the word ‘divorce’ to describe her 2014 separation from Martin, the world collectively eye-rolled.
But now, at 47, recently remarried and (finally) living with her husband, Brad Falchuk, Paltrow has grown a much thicker skin than her fragile beauty might belie.
When we met late last year, she said, “For me, one of the beautiful things about getting older is that I’ve found more peace, I’ve found more comfort with myself and who I am. I feel more comfortable in my own skin and with the choices I’ve made,” she says. “When you get to really know yourself, you’re able to really live in integrity, and a lot of peace comes with that.
“Also, I think you come to understand what’s really important in life, which are your relationships, how you talk to yourself and how you feel in your own skin. For me, it’s been a long process finding peace, but it feels good now.”
Paltrow most recently hit headlines though for something slightly kinky, wildly overpriced, and offered for sale on her goop website. The US$75 candle line, bearing the label ‘This Smells Like My Vagina’, quickly sold out. And though she attracts frequent criticism for both her outlandish products and her company’s apparent disregard for much conventional medical advice, Paltrow has a slavish following of young women and is clearly laughing all the way to the bank.
A demonstrably savvy businesswoman, she says, “I’ve been building this company for almost 11 years now and we now have 250 staff – 80 per cent of whom are women. I really believe that a work environment needs to feel collaborative and creative and kind, that the work/life balance needs to be good, especially because we have so many working mothers at the company.”
Paltrow is easy to chat to and, like many celebrities who have grown up in the public eye, highly skilled at making those around her feel at ease. Be that as it may, what sort of boss is she? She smiles.
“Well, I am a perfectionist in and of myself, and I think that I can be a demanding boss. I don’t like it when we make the same mistakes more than once. I think the team feels very aligned and very close to the mission. I’ve learned so much about myself and have learned to have difficult conversations and give difficult feedback which is really hard for me.” She leans forward. “But I’ve also learned how to use Excel.” She laughs. “Nightmare!”
FACING THE CRITICS
She has also learned to address her critics head-on, many of them competitors of hers in the wellness market. Paltrow has attracted ridicule, for example, for touting the benefits of jade eggs inserted into the vagina (US$66 each on the goop site), suggesting the action balances hormones and regulates menstrual cycles.
There have also been reports of legal trouble, and the company has, to date, paid out US$145,000 in civil penalties, while also being prohibited from making health claims that are not backed up by science.
Naturally, the company boss downplays the drama. “There was no lawsuit,” she insists.
“We are not prescriptive at goop. We never say, ‘You should do this or do that’. Through the process we’ve learned some lessons. If something has a lot of scientific research behind it, we will say so, but if something is more
of a medical intuitive, we will say, ‘Hey, there’s no science behind this, but it’s really interesting’.” Clearly, Paltrow enjoys pushing the envelope, and does so on a regular basis. “Whenever you’re trying to push on culture and move things forward, there’s sometimes a lot of pushback. But we love being trailblazers. A lot of times we talk about something that people think is really outrageous. Then six months down the line everyone is doing it.”
But still, some in the field are smarting that the company, reportedly worth US$250 million, now has its own upcoming six-part series on Netflix: The Goop Lab, which explores pseudoscientific topics like anti-ageing, psychedelic drugs, the paranormal, cold therapy, and female sexuality.
In a Beverly Hills hotel where Paltrow was promoting The Politician, the dark Netflix comedy which marked her return to series television, following a 2014 stint on Glee, she offers, “Well, I decided to do the show because I’m having sex with the writer.” That writer is her husband, writer/ producer/director Brad Falchuk, 49. The pair started dating the same year they met on the set of Glee, which he co-created. They married in 2018, and finally moved in together last summer. And Paltrow insists acting was not at all on her agenda, despite her husband potentially providing a slew of job opportunities.
“I didn’t want to do the show initially because I told him, ‘I am full-time goop’,” she insists. “He came back with, ‘But what if it wasn’t too big of a part?’ So, I read it, thought it was really brilliant and prescient and a really interesting comment on where we are in society right now in America. So, lo and behold, I’m in a TV show!”
She smiles. “It was great to work with Brad,” she says. “He’s a brilliant writer and he’s the only person who I think could have really gotten me back to filming. And it’s fun. He’s my favourite director.”
In The Politician, she plays the mother of an ambitious teenager (Ben Platt) running for Student Body President. Given that politics is the central theme, how much of a politician is she in her own life? Under normal circumstances, is there a lot of handshaking?
She nods. “It’s actually really nice to interact with people. I like it a lot.” She pauses. “There’s always an upside in life when you’re able to interact with people.
MOVIE IMITATES LIFE
Of course those casual words about simple human interaction take on a quite different meaning now we are amid a world pandemic. Recalling past meetings with Paltrow over the past 25 years, in particular one stands out.
It was an interview for Steven Soderbergh’s ‘fictional’ movie Contagion, about the global spread of a lethal virus, premiering during the Venice Film Festival. We were sitting on the rooftop of the impossibly glamorous Hotel Danieli, overlooking the Grand Canal. Below, the streets were jam-packed and the bustling waterways, crowded with gondolas and vaporettos, were jockeying for position. It was another time, in another world.
Back then, in 2011, Paltrow reflected whether a contagion like the one in the movie could happen in real life. “Yeah, I think so,” she said at the time. “Will something like this happen in our lifetime? Possibly, but I try not to worry about things that I can’t control,” she said, matter-of-factly.
Considering the movie’s tagline, ‘Nothing Spreads Like Fear’, it certainly proved to be quite the portent of what was to come, less than a decade later. Of the COVID-19 pandemic, Paltrow recently wrote on
Instagram: “When this crisis started, we held Italy, China, South Korea, Iran, and the other countries affected in our prayers, and now we have all followed suit.
“Each of these places has shown us what strength, resilience, and community can do during these surreal times, strictly restricting movement, with some even singing from their balconies. I wish for all of us to heed these very real warnings so that this unprecedented crisis might pass quickly. Stay home. Make pasta. FaceTime your grandma,” she concluded. “We will get through this.”
Before COVID-19 came along, Paltrow played a part in the downfall of Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood producer who was sentenced to 23 years’ jail earlier this year for rape and sexual assault (and who reportedly has contracted COVID-19). Weinstein cast Paltrow in many of his hit movies, including Shakespeare in Love (1998). The actress’s surprising Best Actress Oscar win for the film still rankles with many in Hollywood who felt Weinstein ‘bought’ the win over Cate Blanchett, red-hot favourite for the honour for her stunning portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I in Elizabeth. But, as she shares, Paltrow paid a price as well.
“I was honoured to play a small part in the #MeToo movement and I was ready to tell my story and support other women in telling their stories,” she says.
Paltrow shared details on ‘The Howard Stern Show’, in 2018, that she was also sexually harassed by Weinstein in a hotel room in 1995. Brad Pitt, whom she was dating at the time, confronted Weinstein and warned him to stay away from her. “If I could go back in time, I would have told my 20-year-old self to speak my truth more, especially as a
woman at that time, I think we were really encouraged to keep the peace and to make everything nice and not ruffle any feathers. And I wish I had learned earlier how important it is, especially for women to speak their truth. It took me a long time to get there.”
From Pitt to Falchuk, with some relationships in between (including Ben Affleck, James Purefoy, Luke Wilson and Scott Speedman), it seems Paltrow got it right this time. In light of her divorce from Martin, she and Falchuk took it slowly for their respective children’s sake. Her daughter, Apple, is just shy of 16, her brother, Moses, is 14. Falchuck also has teens, Isabella and Brody, from a previous marriage.
“I’m very lucky that my ex-husband and I were aligned on the fact that we wanted to stay close friends. And I think because we kept that in the forefront, we’ve been able to move through our lives with other partners and feel like we are adding to the family, instead of it being something that becomes divisive or difficult,” she explains.
“I recognise that it’s unusual, but I feel proud of us that we’ve been able to do that. It took a lot of work but it really paid off and [the divorce] was less traumatic for the children who have managed to come through it pretty okay.” She deadpans. “Though I’m sure I’ve f***ed them up in other ways.” You can always count on Paltrow to infuse a little self-deprecating humour into the most serious of subjects.
MAKING MARRIAGE WORK
Meanwhile, Paltrow and Falchuk’s decision to live apart for the first year of their marriage was entirely for the benefit of their children. “We decided to do that to make the transition for the kids a little bit more gentle because we have teenagers. Once we did finally move in together, of course there are always complications, but I think it’s going pretty well.” On the subject of motherhood, she offers, “I have genuinely loved and adored every single stage of parenting through all the different ages and stages. I think it’s been the most rewarding, the most delightful, sometimes the most challenging part of my life but it’s fantastic. And now that I have teenagers, I’m an old bitch!” she jokes. “I love having them at this age and I am so looking forward to having adult children as well.”
What are some life lessons she’d like to impart to her offspring? “Wow that’s a big question.” She pauses. “For me, it’s very important that I raise children that are not scared to feel their feelings. A lot of us were raised in a generation where we were told, ‘Don’t feel that, don’t show that’, or, ‘It’s not appropriate to show anger or sadness at the dinner table.’” She laughs. “I think our generation was really taught to suppress emotion and I think it’s not good for our souls. It’s really harmful. We’re human beings and we experience a cross-section of emotions every day and that’s part of being human. When we say to our children, ‘Don’t feel that way,’ it creates shame. So, if I’m in the car and I lose my temper because there’s an idiot driving in front of me, I say to my kids, ‘I’m sorry, but I’m feeling a little road rage today.’”
An active philanthropist, Paltrow is a Save the Children artist ambassador, raising awareness about World Pneumonia Day. She is also on the board of the Robin Hood Foundation which works to eradicate poverty in New York City. Whatever she’s doing, professionally and personally, Paltrow looks every inch the personification of perfect health close-up. But then maintaining a healthy lifestyle is part of her brand.
“What I try to do is eat pretty clean during the day so I’ll have salmon and some salad for lunch but at dinner I will always cheat a little bit and have a glass of wine or some cheese or a baguette or something delicious, maybe a brownie. I don’t believe in being too strict, I think that you have to enjoy life – and food is such an important part of it. I get so much pleasure from something delicious or from a great martini, so I don’t like to give anything up,” she says. “But if I’m starting to feel really run down or I’ve travelled a lot, I’ll do seven days where I’ll be really good with food, lots of hydration and no alcohol. But for the most part, I’ve relaxed a lot as I’ve gotten older.”
And she makes the most of her good fortune and personal success. “I feel like I have so much to learn still as a human being, as the mother of teenagers, and as a wife. I feel like such a work in progress in so many ways. Careerwise, I hope to continue to grow my company and really impact people’s lives positively with it. And I just want to keep growing. I am at that point now where you start to sense, ‘Gosh, life is finite.’ You don’t feel that when you’re 27, but now at 47 you are like, ‘Wow, this thing is probably half over, at least’.”
She smiles. “So now I just want to really squeeze all the juice out of life and make it worthwhile.”
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“I FEEL I HAVE SO MUCH TO LEARN STILL AS A HUMAN BEING.” GWYNETH PALTROW