Gwyneth Paltrow

Gwyneth Paltrow (born September 27, 1972, Los Angeles, California, U.S.) is an American actress and lifestyle innovator who was best known for her film portrayals of intelligent and complex characters. In 2008 she created goop, a lifestyle brand.

Paltrow was the daughter of television producer Bruce Paltrow and Tony Award-winning actress Blythe Danner. By her own account, Paltrow knew from a young age that she wanted to act, and she appeared in her first part, a stage walk-on role, at age five. Her family moved to New York City when Paltrow was 11 years old. She attended a prestigious girls’ school and studied acting at a summer camp in Vermont. She briefly attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, before appearing onstage alongside her mother in William Inge’s play Picnic at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Her parents recognized her talent and passion for acting and supported her decision to leave college to pursue acting full-time.

Paltrow’s early film roles included a small part as Peter Pan’s young friend Wendy in Steven Spielberg’s Hook (1991) and, in a critically well-received role, as a drifter and con artist in Flesh and Bone (1993). Her career continued to progress with supporting roles as a bohemian artist in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994), as Thomas Jefferson’s daughter in Jefferson in Paris (1995), and alongside Morgan Freeman and then-boyfriend Brad Pitt in the thriller Se7en (1995). Her first starring role, as the title character in the 1996 film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, garnered high praise. In 1998 she appeared in five films, most notably Shakespeare in Love, in which she gave an Academy Award-winning performance as William Shakespeare’s muse Viola; the film also earned an Oscar for best picture.

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Paltrow followed up with diverse roles, including a karaoke singer in Duets (2000), which was directed by her father; former child prodigy Margot Tenenbaum in Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums (2001); and late poet Sylvia Plath in Sylvia (2003). She played a gifted mathematician questioning her mental health in Proof (2005); Paltrow had originally played that role—to great praise—in the 2002 London stage production. She showcased her singing talents as a country star in the film Country Strong (2010) and in a recurring part (2010–11) on the popular musical television show Glee, for which she earned an Emmy Award. In some of her highest-grossing films, she appeared with Robert Downey, Jr., as Iron Man’s companion Pepper Potts in the blockbuster Iron Man series (2008, 2010, and 2013), a role that she reprised for The Avengers (2012), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), and Avengers: Endgame (2019). She also appeared in the comic caper Mortdecai (2015), as the wife of a flamboyant art dealer and spy (Johnny Depp). In 2019 Paltrow was cast as the mother of an overachieving student in Netflix’s farcical series The Politician.

In addition to her career as an actress, Paltrow positioned herself as a lifestyle expert with the 2008 launch of goop, a digital media and e-commerce company that offered advice on such topics as style, shopping, and food. Although some of the wellness advice proved controversial because of safety and efficacy concerns, goop became hugely popular. A skin-care line and a fashion line, G. Label, were launched in 2016. Paltrow also wrote the cookbooks My Father’s Daughter (2011), It’s All Good (2013; written with Julia Turshen), and The Clean Plate: Eat, Reset, Heal (2019).

In 2003 Paltrow married Chris Martin, the lead singer and pianist of Coldplay. The couple separated in 2014 and divorced two years later. Paltrow’s characterization of the split as a “conscious uncoupling” sparked both derision and praise in the media. Some contended that the phrase only heightened the perception of Paltrow as pretentious and aloof, and others lauded the sensitivity and maturity with which the couple ended their relationship. Paltrow later married writer and producer Brad Falchuk (2018), whom she met while working on Glee.