‘Complex’ Gwyneth Paltrow Revealed in Bombshell New Book (Exclusive)

At simply 12 days previous, Gwyneth Paltrow arrived on her first Hollywood set to go to her mother, actress Blythe Danner. So started the illustrious lifetime of the daughter of Danner and TV producer Bruce Paltrow. She rapidly captivated audiences herself as she grew up, performing together with her mom on the famend Williamstown Theatre Competition at 8, successful an Oscar at 26 because the willowy, magnetic star of Shakespeare in Love, and turning into a nineties “It Lady,” although she known as that “a joke” to her closest pals.  

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In 2008, the mother of two stepped into a brand new sort of position with the launch of Goop, a showcase for her rarefied style that began as an electronic mail publication and went on to develop into a media empire. Every detox cleanse, exorbitantly dear reward information and unsubstantiated well being endorsement (reminiscent of inserting a jade egg vaginally to “steadiness hormones”) placing her within the highlight as soon as once more.

At 52, she’s the topic of a juicy new biography, Gwyneth: The Biography by Amy Odell, excerpted completely on this week’s PEOPLE. The e-book, based mostly on over 220 interviews, digs deep into why the star continues to intrigue. Says Odell, “Love her or hate her, we have not been capable of look away.”

Under, learn an unique excerpt from Gwyneth by Amy Odell.

In 1984 Gwyneth enrolled on the posh non-public faculty Spence in Manhattan and rapidly charmed her classmates.

She had unusually potent charisma, and different Spence women — even seniors — wished to spend money on realizing this new center schooler. However different college students appeared to really feel threatened. One classmate recalled, “Not one individual had a doubt that she was going to be well-known.”

She excelled in theater and did properly with Shakespeare however struggled with teachers.

Gwyneth instructed pals that [James] Dawson, her adviser, had agreed to go her in a category during which she was struggling so she might graduate. “You’re going to win the Academy Award,” Dawson instructed her. “I’m going to thanks when it occurs,” she stated. (She didn’t.)

In her senior yearbook, she borrowed her parting phrases from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure: “Be glorious to one another and celebration on, dudes.” Within the “Nightmare” column, different college students obtained issues [written by yearbook editors] like “AP Spanish Lang.” Gwyneth’s was “Weight problems.”

She dropped out of UC Santa Barbara early on, and in 1994 she met Brad Pitt at an audition for Legends of the Fall. She didn’t get the half, however he later instructed she play his spouse within the movie Se7en.

Nonetheless, she obtained one other supply to seem with Keanu Reeves in Feeling Minnesota. Uncertain which one to take, she consulted with a buddy, who stated, “Effectively, who do you need to date, Brad Pitt or Keanu Reeves?” Gwyneth selected Se7en and Pitt, and Cameron Diaz took the Feeling Minnesota half. The Pitt-Paltrow romance didn’t keep hidden for lengthy. The 2 would stroll across the set holding fingers, and smoked cigarettes collectively exterior their trailers, Gwyneth holding hers like a thirties film star.

As she started wowing administrators together with her charisma and expertise, together with her capacity to rapidly study accents, she was solid within the Jane Austen adaptation Emma.

Throughout Emma’s filming, Gwyneth expressed doubts to at least one crew member that Pitt was proper for her, and admitted that she had a crush on Hugh Grant. “Brad and I had very completely different upbringings,” she instructed an interviewer. “So after we go to eating places and order caviar, I’ve to say to Brad, ‘That is beluga and that is osetra.’ ” 

Gwyneth’s efficiency obtained rave opinions when Emma was launched in 1996.

After Emma got here out, Gwyneth went over to [her friend, makeup artist Kevyn] Aucoin’s place and cried about Pitt a number of occasions. He wished to be together with her however appeared to really feel threatened by her success and all the eye she obtained. [Aucoin’s] recommendation to Gwyneth was frank, “You really want to finish this.”

Gwyneth and Pitt by no means publicly gave a concrete purpose for his or her [1997] breakup, although two individuals recalled a rumor about it stemming from Gwyneth dishonest on Pitt [with costar John Hannah] whereas she was filming Sliding Doorways. She instructed Howard Stern in 2015: “I wasn’t prepared, and he was too good for me.”

She started relationship Ben Affleck in late 1997.

Affleck was combating alcoholism and a playing behavior across the time he met Gwyneth, who was drawn to his mind. Her pals had reservations about him, as a result of he didn’t at all times reciprocate her affection. He at occasions appeared extra desirous about enjoying video video games with the fellows at his home than being with Gwyneth. She spoke overtly about how a lot she loved their intercourse life. She instructed Aucoin sooner or later that she cherished when Affleck [engaged in a certain sex act].  

When she obtained the script for Shakespeare in Love, which began filming in 1998, she first turned it down with out studying all the factor. 

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Winona Ryder’s identify had additionally been bandied about for the position. “It was by no means despatched to Winona as a suggestion, however Winona wished to do the half and Gwyneth had advisable her for the half,” stated [producer Harvey] Weinstein. After a narrative about Gwyneth allegedly stealing the script from Winona’s espresso desk reached the media, Gwyneth instructed pals that Ryder had began the rumor, and insisted she’d obtained the script by way of her agent. Shakespeare in Love opened on December 11 to ravishing opinions. 

Gwyneth and Affleck broke up the subsequent month, after slightly over a 12 months. Their bodily chemistry couldn’t overcome his self-destructive impulses, which can have even included dishonest on her. After they broke up, Gwyneth stated, “I really like males, though they’re mendacity, dishonest scumbags.”

She was nominated for an Oscar in 1999 and Ralph Lauren was requested to design her robe. She requested a design impressed by Grace Kelly. 

Main as much as the awards, she hadn’t been consuming a lot and saved shedding weight, necessitating further fittings, the place Gwyneth requested the Ralph Lauren workforce in New York to carry the neckline decrease and decrease. Lauren grew to become so annoyed that he didn’t need to ship the gown again to Los Angeles. However his workforce satisfied him, and located a talented seamstress to suit the items of the gown onto Gwyneth there.

The designers at Ralph Lauren seen that one thing seemed off when she wore it that night time. The material was puckering, slightly wrinkly, unfastened round her torso — as if she had immediately misplaced 10 kilos. They realized she hadn’t worn the internal removable corset that got here with the robe, which might have made it match extra snugly. Lauren was not glad in regards to the match.

After she gained the Oscar, she stayed in mattress for 10 days, overwhelmed. She reunited with Affleck that fall and centered on her well being.

Affleck’s habit points resurfaced, and he and Gwyneth broke up for good in October 2000. Whereas he had been turning to alcohol, she was training Ashtanga yoga six occasions every week, meditating day by day, and watching her weight loss program. 

Hoping to alter up her critical picture, in 2001, she performed an chubby lady within the Farrelly Brothers comedy, Shallow Hal. 

Earlier than filming started, 120-pound Gwyneth slipped right into a rubbery, 25-pound fats go well with [that] was meant to make her seem like she weighed 350 kilos. She deliberate to stroll round downtown Charlotte. Barry Teague, a producer, had been instructed to maintain sufficient of a distance in order that she felt like she was alone. Teague, who weighed 325 kilos himself, felt pained as he watched two middle-aged males hurry round her like she was a trash can. Even by the comparatively permissive requirements of 2002, Shallow Hal generated controversy for utilizing fatness as a punch line. Gwyneth instructed pals that she felt just like the movie might carry consideration to what would later be extensively termed fat-shaming. In an interview with Leisure Tonight, [Gwyneth] stated, “I obtained an actual sense of what it will be wish to be that chubby, and each fairly lady needs to be pressured to try this.”

Devastated by her father’s demise from oral most cancers in 2002, she discovered solace in relationship Coldplay rock star Chris Martin and hoped to start out a household.

Each aspired to some sort of soulful, mental seriousness at a second when their work was pulling them towards mass enchantment and triviality. But her pals felt like one thing didn’t fairly click on. Martin was an introvert who could possibly be socially awkward. However he was unbelievable onstage, and Gwyneth, who was able to quiet down, was seduced by his persona. 

They married on Dec. 5, 2003 and had daughter Apple in 2004, adopted by son Moses in 2006. Just a few years later, Gwyneth’s friendship with longtime pal Madonna crumbled.

Their relationship reached a breaking level when Madonna confirmed as much as an island the place Gwyneth and Martin have been vacationing. Madonna appeared to know that Gwyneth could be there, which Gwyneth appeared to seek out unusual, a buddy remembered.

Madonna then insisted Gwyneth and Martin be part of her for an enormous group dinner at a protracted desk the place Madonna went off on her daughter, Lourdes. Gwyneth and Martin have been disgusted by the conduct. “I can’t be round this lady anymore,” Martin instructed Gwyneth. “She’s terrible.” Gwyneth agreed that Madonna was poisonous and ended the friendship.

Gwyneth launched Goop in 2008 and wrote 4 bestselling cookbooks centered on wellness. Within the second, It’s All Good, she shared a 2011 scare when she thought she’d had a stroke — which, alongside together with her father’s most cancers, led her to hunt solutions from varied well being gurus.

She went to see a number of medical doctors (she referred to them as “medical doctors,” however not all of them have been medical medical doctors.) She was satisfied one thing was flawed together with her. They instructed it was a migraine headache coupled with a panic assault. Gwyneth presumed this was her physique reacting to her busy schedule and the accompanying air journey, stress, and adrenaline. Plus, she had not too long ago been ingesting wine and consuming french fries. At this level, Gwyneth had been making an attempt to optimize her life for years, overriding peculiar emotional ache — nervousness, grief, anger — by way of bodily interventions like intense train and radical adjustments in weight loss program.  

One in every of her medical doctors, Alejandro Junger, suggested an “elimination weight loss program.”

Marion Nestle, professor emerita of vitamin, public well being, and meals research at New York College, stated, “Some individuals would possibly really feel higher not consuming this stuff [that Junger recommended banning], however for most individuals it gained’t make a lot distinction.”

Junger’s plan forbade espresso, alcohol, dairy, eggs, sugar, shellfish, deepwater fish, potatoes, tomatoes, bell pepper, eggplant, corn, wheat, meat, soy, and something processed. Gwyneth constructed a weight loss program out of no matter was left.

On March 25, 2014, she shared on Goop that she and Martin have been “consciously uncoupling.” Readership was so enormous, the positioning crashed. 

Whereas she privately struggled to generate optimism in regards to the separation, she discovered a solution to do it publicly, to show this painful, complicated failure right into a challenge that may encourage and illuminate — and possibly enhance the model. Whereas a few of Gwyneth’s previous pals have been shocked by her divorce, she instructed them that they had separated a 12 months earlier, and that she had come to phrases with it.

She turned Goop right into a powerhouse platform — however might nonetheless chuckle at herself. 

Throughout management workforce conferences, Gwyneth generally introduced in certainly one of her gurus to carry a self-improvement workshop. At one such assembly, a facilitator requested the executives to take turns saying one factor they believed to be true about themselves however wasn’t true of anyone else within the room. When it was Gwyneth’s flip, she stated with a smile, “I gained an Oscar.” Her workforce’s response amounted to a playful “Gwyneth, f— off.”

Gwyneth was dedicated to overlaying merchandise and experiences that translated her personal tastes for her viewers — nevertheless weird or inaccessible they is perhaps. The Tikkun spa in Santa Monica was featured in early 2015 in Goop’s Santa Monica metropolis information, with a concentrate on its vaginal steaming therapy. It went up quietly at first—then the web swarmed. The spa’s proprietor Niki Schwarz recalled Gwyneth coming in to do the steam with celeb pals, and telling her that the therapy “modified her life.” 

Medical specialists scoffed — and warned the steaming, like a few of Goop’s different alternative-health suggestions, could possibly be harmful. In the meantime, beneath the corporate’s shiny floor, workplace dynamics have been generally troublesome. 

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Executives struggled to navigate Gwyneth’s impatience and perfectionism. They appeared threatened by one another, based mostly on whom Gwyneth was favoring in a given second (and he or she made it clear). Workers who labored up the nerve to enter her workplace have been typically met with impatience, an perspective of “What would you like? Get it over with.” 

Goop weathered quite a few controversies and lawsuits however the consideration solely drove extra visitors to the positioning. In 2017, she hosted a well being discussion board.

Attendees traveled from throughout for the summit, the place they may begin the day with a saline IV (Gwyneth cherished IVs and generally had them administered throughout conferences within the workplace). Company might then check out “sound tub meditation,” in addition to a “10-minute facelift” throughout which an natural sugar thread was inserted into the cheek. (Gwyneth instructed her workers she subscribed to this, together with slightly filler, although she was open about disliking Botox, saying that it made her look “loopy” and “like Joan Rivers.”)

Wed to producer Brad Falchuk since 2018, Gwyneth grew to become an empty-nester in 2024 and returned to performing reverse Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme, slated to open this Dec. 25. Goop has struggled to show a revenue, however she stays a coveted face for luxe manufacturers like Saint Laurent.

Gwyneth had instructed workers that she wished to construct a enterprise she might go right down to Apple, who one individual stated had “real curiosity” in Goop. No matter path she chooses, stated [her agent and close friend] CAA’s Richard Lovett, “She’s not going to be the subsequent [Gwyneth], however she would be the unique Apple.”

Because it stands now, Gwyneth will most likely be remembered much less for her movie work than what she selected to do with it exterior of Hollywood. Her best cultural impression isn’t popularizing Calvin Klein trend or jade eggs — it’s displaying the world simply how a lot customers will spend for the luxurious of being properly, it doesn’t matter what science tells us. No matter occurs with Goop, Gwyneth can be fantastic. 

From Gwyneth: The Biography by Amy Odell. Copyright © 2025 by Amy Odell. Reprinted by permission of Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC.

Gwyneth: The Biography hits cabinets on July 29 and is obtainable now for preorder, wherever books are bought.