NEED TO KNOW<\/p>\n
At just 12 days old, Gwyneth Paltrow<\/a> arrived on her first Hollywood set to visit her mom, actress Blythe Danner<\/a>. So began the illustrious life of the daughter of Danner and TV producer Bruce Paltrow<\/a>. She quickly captivated audiences herself as she grew up, performing with her mother at the renowned Williamstown Theatre Festival at 8, winning an Oscar at 26 as the willowy, magnetic star of Shakespeare in Love<\/a>, and becoming a nineties \u201cIt Girl,\u201d though she called that \u201ca joke\u201d to her closest friends. \u00a0\n<\/p>\n For more on Gwyneth Paltrow, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, or subscribe\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n In 2008, the mom of two stepped into a new kind of role with the launch of Goop, a showcase for her rarefied taste that started as an email newsletter and went on to become a media empire. Each detox cleanse, exorbitantly pricey gift guide and unsubstantiated health endorsement (such as inserting a jade egg vaginally to \u201cbalance hormones\u201d) putting her in the spotlight once again.\n<\/p>\n At 52, she\u2019s the subject of a juicy new biography, Gwyneth: The Biography<\/a> by Amy Odell, excerpted exclusively in this week’s PEOPLE. The book, based on over 220 interviews, digs deep into why the star continues to intrigue. Says Odell, “Love her or hate her, we haven’t been able to look away.”\n<\/p>\n Below, read an exclusive excerpt from Gwyneth<\/a> by Amy Odell.\n<\/p>\n The cover of PEOPLE Magazine featuring Gwyneth Paltrow.<\/p>\n In 1984 Gwyneth enrolled at the posh private school Spence in Manhattan and quickly charmed her classmates.\n<\/p>\n She had strangely potent charisma, and other Spence girls \u2014 even seniors \u2014 wanted to invest in knowing this new middle schooler. But other students seemed to feel threatened. One classmate recalled, \u201cNot one person had a doubt that she was going to be famous.\u201d\n<\/p>\n She excelled in theater and did well with Shakespeare<\/a> but struggled with academics.\n<\/p>\n Gwyneth told friends that [James] Dawson, her adviser, had agreed to pass her in a class in which she was struggling so she could graduate. \u201cYou\u2019re going to win the Academy Award,\u201d Dawson told her. \u201cI\u2019m going to thank you when it happens,\u201d she said. (She didn\u2019t.)\n<\/p>\n In her senior yearbook, she borrowed her parting words from Bill & Ted\u2019s Excellent Adventure<\/a>: \u201cBe excellent to each other and party on, dudes.\u201d In the \u201cNightmare\u201d column, other students got things [written by yearbook editors] like \u201cAP Spanish Lang.\u201d Gwyneth\u2019s was \u201cObesity.\u201d\n<\/p>\n She dropped out of UC Santa Barbara early on, and in 1994 she met Brad Pitt<\/a> at an audition for Legends of the Fall<\/a>. She didn\u2019t get the part, but he later suggested she play his wife in the film Se7en<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n Blythe Danner and Gwyneth Paltrow during the New York Cabaret Benefit for the Williamstown Theater Festival at Studio 54 in 1985.<\/p>\n Ron Galella\/Getty<\/p>\n However, she received another offer to appear with Keanu Reeves<\/a> in Feeling Minnesota. Unsure which one to take, she consulted with a friend, who said, \u201cWell, who do you want to date, Brad Pitt or Keanu Reeves?\u201d Gwyneth chose Se7en and Pitt, and Cameron Diaz<\/a> took the Feeling Minnesota part. The Pitt-Paltrow romance didn\u2019t stay hidden for long. The two would walk around the set holding hands, and smoked cigarettes together outside their trailers, Gwyneth holding hers like a thirties movie star.\n<\/p>\n As she began wowing directors with her charisma and talent, including her ability to quickly learn accents, she was cast in the Jane Austen adaptation Emma<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n During Emma\u2019s filming, Gwyneth expressed doubts to one crew member that Pitt was right for her, and admitted that she had a crush on Hugh Grant<\/a>. \u201cBrad and I had very different upbringings,\u201d she told an interviewer. \u201cSo when we go to restaurants and order caviar, I have to say to Brad, \u2018This is beluga and this is osetra.\u2019 \u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n Gwyneth\u2019s performance got rave reviews when Emma was released in 1996.\n<\/p>\n After Emma came out, Gwyneth went over to [her friend, makeup artist Kevyn] Aucoin\u2019s place and cried about Pitt multiple times. He wanted to be with her but seemed to feel threatened by her success and all the attention she received. [Aucoin\u2019s] advice to Gwyneth was frank, \u201cYou really need to end this.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Gwyneth and Brad Pitt in Se7en.<\/p>\n New Line Cinema\/Photofest<\/p>\n Gwyneth and Pitt never publicly gave a concrete reason for their [1997] breakup, though two people recalled a rumor about it stemming from Gwyneth cheating on Pitt [with costar John Hannah] while she was filming Sliding Doors. She told Howard Stern in 2015: \u201cI wasn\u2019t ready, and he was too good for me.\u201d\n<\/p>\n She began dating Ben Affleck in late 1997.\n<\/p>\n Affleck was struggling with alcoholism and a gambling habit around the time he met Gwyneth, who was attracted to his intellect. Her friends had reservations about him, because he didn\u2019t always reciprocate her affection. He at times seemed more interested in playing video games with the guys at his house than being with Gwyneth. She spoke openly about how much she enjoyed their sex life. She told Aucoin one day that she loved when Affleck [engaged in a certain sex act].\u00a0\u00a0\n<\/p>\n When she got the script for Shakespeare in Love<\/a>, which started filming in 1998, she first turned it down without reading the entire thing.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n The PEOPLE App<\/a> is now available in the Apple App Store! Download it now for the most binge-worthy celeb content, exclusive video clips, astrology updates and more!<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n Winona Ryder<\/a>\u2019s name had also been bandied about for the role. \u201cIt was never sent to Winona as an offer, but Winona wanted to do the part and Gwyneth had recommended her for the part,\u201d said [producer Harvey] Weinstein. After a story about Gwyneth allegedly stealing the script from Winona\u2019s coffee table reached the media, Gwyneth told friends that Ryder had started the rumor, and insisted she\u2019d received the script through her agent. Shakespeare in Love opened on December 11 to ravishing reviews.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n Gwyneth and Affleck broke up the next month, after a little over a year. Their physical chemistry couldn\u2019t overcome his self-destructive impulses, which may have even included cheating on her. After they broke up, Gwyneth said, \u201cI love men, even though they\u2019re lying, cheating scumbags.\u201d<\/p>\n She was nominated for an Oscar in 1999 and Ralph Lauren<\/a> was asked to design her gown. She requested a design inspired by Grace Kelly.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n Leading up to the awards, she hadn\u2019t been eating much and kept losing weight, necessitating extra fittings, where Gwyneth asked the Ralph Lauren team in New York to bring the neckline lower and lower. Lauren became so frustrated that he didn\u2019t want to send the dress back to Los Angeles. But his team convinced him, and found a skilled seamstress to fit the pieces of the dress onto Gwyneth there.\n<\/p>\n The designers at Ralph Lauren noticed that something looked off when she wore it that night. The fabric was puckering, a little wrinkly, loose around her torso \u2014 as if she had instantly lost 10 pounds. They realized she hadn\u2019t worn the inner detachable corset that came with the gown, which would have made it fit more snugly. Lauren was not happy about the fit.\n<\/p>\n After she won the Oscar, she stayed in bed for 10 days, overwhelmed. She reunited with Affleck that fall and focused on her health.\n<\/p>\n Affleck\u2019s addiction issues resurfaced, and he and Gwyneth broke up for good in October 2000. While he had been turning to alcohol, she was practicing Ashtanga yoga six times a week, meditating daily, and watching her diet.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n Hoping to change up her serious image, in 2001, she played an overweight woman in the Farrelly Brothers comedy, Shallow Hal<\/a>.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n The cover of ‘Gwyneth’ by Amy Odell.<\/p>\n Before filming began, 120-pound Gwyneth slipped into a rubbery, 25-pound fat suit [that] was meant to make her look like she weighed 350 pounds. She planned to walk around downtown Charlotte. Barry Teague, a producer, had been instructed to keep enough of a distance so that she felt like she was alone. Teague, who weighed 325 pounds himself, felt pained as he watched two middle-aged men hurry around her like she was a trash can. Even by the relatively permissive standards of 2002, Shallow Hal generated controversy for using fatness as a punch line. Gwyneth told friends that she felt like the film could bring attention to what would later be widely termed fat-shaming. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, [Gwyneth] said, \u201cI got a real sense of what it would be like to be that overweight, and every pretty girl should be forced to do that.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Devastated by her father\u2019s death from oral cancer in 2002, she found solace in dating Coldplay rock star Chris Martin<\/a> and hoped to start a family.\n<\/p>\n Both aspired to some kind of soulful, intellectual seriousness at a moment when their work was pulling them toward mass appeal and triviality. Yet her friends felt like something didn\u2019t quite click. Martin was an introvert who could be socially awkward. But he was incredible onstage, and Gwyneth, who was ready to settle down, was seduced by his persona.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n They married on Dec. 5, 2003 and had daughter Apple in 2004, followed by son Moses in 2006. A few years later, Gwyneth\u2019s friendship with longtime pal Madonna<\/a> crumbled.\n<\/p>\n Their relationship reached a breaking point when Madonna showed up to an island where Gwyneth and Martin were vacationing. Madonna seemed to know that Gwyneth would be there, which Gwyneth seemed to find strange, a friend remembered.\n<\/p>\n Madonna and Gwyneth at the 2010 Bent on Learning benefit at the Puck Building in New York City.<\/p>\n Sara Jaye Weiss\/Startraks<\/p>\n Madonna then insisted Gwyneth and Martin join her for a big group dinner at a long table where Madonna went off on her daughter, Lourdes<\/a>. Gwyneth and Martin were disgusted by the behavior. \u201cI can\u2019t be around this woman anymore,\u201d Martin told Gwyneth. \u201cShe\u2019s awful.\u201d Gwyneth agreed that Madonna was toxic and ended the friendship.\n<\/p>\n Gwyneth launched Goop<\/a> in 2008 and wrote four bestselling cookbooks focused on wellness. In the second, It\u2019s All Good, she shared a 2011 scare when she thought she\u2019d had a stroke \u2014 which, along with her father\u2019s cancer, led her to seek answers from various health gurus.\n<\/p>\n She went to see a host of doctors (she referred to them as \u201cdoctors,\u201d but not all of them were medical doctors.) She was convinced something was wrong with her. They suggested it was a migraine headache coupled with a panic attack. Gwyneth presumed this was her body reacting to her busy schedule and the accompanying air travel, stress, and adrenaline. Plus, she had recently been drinking wine and eating french fries. At this point, Gwyneth had been trying to optimize her life for years, overriding ordinary emotional pain \u2014 anxiety, grief, anger \u2014 through physical interventions like intense exercise and radical changes in diet.\u00a0\u00a0\n<\/p>\n One of her doctors, Alejandro Junger<\/a>, advised an \u201celimination diet.”\n<\/p>\n Marion Nestle, professor emerita of nutrition, public health, and food studies at New York University, said, \u201cSome people might feel better not eating these things [that Junger recommended banning], but for most people it won\u2019t make much difference.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Junger\u2019s plan forbade coffee, alcohol, dairy, eggs, sugar, shellfish, deepwater fish, potatoes, tomatoes, bell pepper, eggplant, corn, wheat, meat, soy, and anything processed. Gwyneth built a diet out of whatever was left.\n<\/p>\n On March 25, 2014, she shared on Goop that she and Martin were \u201cconsciously uncoupling.\u201d Readership was so huge, the site crashed.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n While she privately struggled to generate optimism about the separation, she found a way to do it publicly, to turn this painful, confusing failure into a project that might inspire and illuminate \u2014 and maybe boost the brand. While some of Gwyneth\u2019s old friends were shocked by her divorce, she told them they had separated a year earlier, and that she had come to terms with it.\n<\/p>\n Gwyneth Paltrow, Chris Martin and their two children in an Instagram from Father’s Day 2025.<\/p>\n Gwyneth Paltrow\/Instagram<\/p>\n She turned Goop into a powerhouse platform \u2014 but could still laugh at herself.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n During leadership team meetings, Gwyneth sometimes brought in one of her gurus to hold a self-improvement workshop. At one such meeting, a facilitator asked the executives to take turns saying one thing they believed to be true about themselves but wasn\u2019t true of anybody else in the room. When it was Gwyneth\u2019s turn, she said with a smile, \u201cI won an Oscar.\u201d Her team\u2019s reaction amounted to a playful \u201cGwyneth, f— off.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Gwyneth was committed to covering products and experiences that translated her own tastes for her audience \u2014 however bizarre or inaccessible they might be. The Tikkun spa in Santa Monica was featured in early 2015 in Goop\u2019s Santa Monica city guide, with a focus on its vaginal steaming treatment. It went up quietly at first\u2014then the internet swarmed. The spa\u2019s owner Niki Schwarz recalled Gwyneth coming in to do the steam with celebrity friends, and telling her that the treatment \u201cchanged her life.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n Medical experts scoffed \u2014 and warned the steaming, like some of Goop\u2019s other alternative-health recommendations, could be dangerous. Meanwhile, underneath the company\u2019s glossy surface, office dynamics were sometimes difficult.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n Never miss a story \u2014 sign up for\u00a0PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter<\/a>\u00a0to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer , from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.\u00a0<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n Executives struggled to navigate Gwyneth\u2019s impatience and perfectionism. They seemed threatened by each other, based on whom Gwyneth was favoring in a given moment (and she made it clear). Employees who worked up the nerve to go into her office were often met with impatience, an attitude of \u201cWhat do you want? Get it over with.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n Goop weathered numerous controversies and lawsuits but the attention only drove more traffic to the site. In 2017, she hosted a health forum.\n<\/p>\n Attendees traveled from all over for the summit, where they could start the day with a saline IV (Gwyneth loved IVs and sometimes had them administered during meetings in the office). Guests could then try out \u201csound bath meditation,\u201d as well as a \u201c10-minute facelift\u201d during which an organic sugar thread was inserted into the cheek. (Gwyneth told her staff she subscribed to this, along with a little filler, though she was open about disliking Botox, saying that it made her look \u201ccrazy\u201d and \u201clike Joan Rivers.\u201d)\n<\/p>\n Wed to producer Brad Falchuk<\/a> since 2018, Gwyneth became an empty-nester in 2024 and returned to acting opposite Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet<\/a> in Marty Supreme<\/a>, slated to open this Dec. 25. Goop has struggled to turn a profit, but she remains a coveted face for luxe brands like Saint Laurent.\n<\/p>\n Gwyneth had told staff that she wanted to build a business she could pass down to Apple, who one person said had \u201cgenuine interest\u201d in Goop. Whatever direction she chooses, said [her agent and close friend] CAA\u2019s Richard Lovett, \u201cShe\u2019s not going to be the next [Gwyneth], but she will be the original Apple.\u201d\n<\/p>\n As it stands now, Gwyneth will probably be remembered less for her film work than what she chose to do with it outside of Hollywood. Her greatest cultural impact isn\u2019t popularizing Calvin Klein fashion or jade eggs \u2014 it\u2019s showing the world just how much consumers will spend for the luxury of being well, no matter what science tells us. Whatever happens with Goop, Gwyneth will be fine.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n