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Gwyneth Paltrow has been a controversial figure since the moment she ascended those Oscars steps in 1999. Wearing a pink ball gown by Ralph Lauren, the 26-year-old Best Actress winner looked like a real life princess. But her speech was too gushing, her tears too sincere, and there was backlash.
Considering everything that would come after — the misjudged comments in interviews, the weird wellness practices, the Goop lawsuit, the ski trial — this affronted response was just the beginning. Gwyneth would become no stranger to dividing the press or making headlines for the wrong reasons.
The next year, she told a reporter: “It’s not like I go out there and say ‘Will you please put me on the cover of the tabloids?’ or ‘Will you please mention me in every article about lipstick?’ People just do that and it’s beyond my control... I’m sick of this Gwyneth Paltrow person I see everywhere. I hate her and I wish she would go away. But there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Fast forward 25 years, and Gwyneth Paltrow is just as divisive now as she was then. This wobbly reputation has been bolstered by her status as a wellness guru and founder of lifestyle brand Goop. But she also has great potential to win people over: just look at her recent marketing stunt for Astronomer, the company where CEO Andy Byron worked before Chris Martin and Coldplay revealed his concert canoodling this July. In one quick minute, Gwyneth had won back the world once again.
No one understands Gwyneth’s Marmite-like quality better than Amy Odell, whose biography of Paltrow is out now. It’s a thoroughly juicy and well-researched read.
Here are some of the biggest revelations uncovered by Odell as part of her research for Gwyneth.
1. Madonna once sent a young Gwyneth Paltrow a personalised note asking her to stop smoking
While Gwyneth Paltrow is best known now as a bastion of good health, she smoked 20 cigarettes a day for much of her late teens and early 20s. When her father, the producer Bruce Paltrow, found out Gwyneth was smoking in her teens, he wanted her to stop. He got in touch with his friend Leo Penn, a director, and asked him to reach out to his brother Sean, and his new wife, Madonna.
The singer then sent Gwyneth a note saying: “Dear Gwyneth, Just to jot down my average day... I wake up, I don’t smoke...” the note said. “And I go home a happy healthy me. Love, Me, Madonna. P.S: Good girls live longer.”
2. Gwyneth’s school yearbook editors listed her worst fear as ‘obesity’
According to the biography, Gwyneth’s year book editors made some pointed choices for her entry. For her “Counterpart”, they listed Cheech Marin of Cheech & Chong, while her “Food Counterpart” was iced coffee. In the worst “Nightmare” column, other students were assigned answers like “A limit on her credit card,” “Westchester,” or “Breaking a nail.” But Gwyneth’s was allegedly “Obesity.”
3. Gwyneth and Brad Pitt were photographed nude on holiday in St. Barts
Gwyneth Paltrow dated Brad Pitt from 1994 to 1997, and even got engaged in 1996. At one point early in their relationship, the pair were photographed entirely nude in broad daylight while outside their rented villa in St. Barts.
Thankfully, this being in 1995, it was pre-internet-boom, so the photos are dead and buried. According to Odell’s biography, Gwyneth “found it annoying but didn’t seem particularly rattled by it.” While Pitt was said to be very bothered.
4. Gwyneth and Brad were kicked out of their hotel suite so the Queen could eat in there
While staying at The Berkeley hotel during the filming for Emma in 1995, Gwyneth and Brad were randomly ejected from their room one evening for secretive reasons. “That night, [Emma producer, Steven] Haft escorted them to a spot near the side entrance of the hotel,” the book says.
“‘Just watch,’ [Haft] said. Within minutes, three Rolls-Royces pulled up, and out of one stepped Queen Elizabeth and the queen mother, who made their way inside to the balcony suite, where, Haft had been told, they planned to dine. After Their Royal Highnesses cleared out, the production crew moved Gwyneth and Pitt back in.”
5. She got an osteopath to manipulate Apple’s newborn skull
Gwyneth Paltrow gave birth to her first child, Apple, who she shares with Coldplay singer Chris Martin, in May 2024. By this point, Paltrow was already pretty into wellness. Once Apple had been born, Gwyneth apparently had her osteopath, Vicky Vlachonis, “perform ‘cranial osteopathy’ on Apple’s newly emerged head, which involved using a light touch to manipulate a baby’s skull bones.” The book notes that this practice is not recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Others claim it has limited beneficial impacts.
6. Gwyneth once said ‘I would rather die than let my kid eat a cup-a-soup’
Gwyneth was known for making it obvious when people around her were behaving in ways that didn’t line up with her wellness routine. In one instance, while on set for a short film, she saw a sachet of instant soup and was apparently heard saying: “I would rather die than let my kid eat Cup-a-Soup.”
7. She lived on an abandoned desert island for three days after the Pitt breakup
A truly forgotten piece of Paltrow lore. In 1997, shortly after her breakup from Brad Pitt, Gwyneth went and lived on a desert island for three days, just to see if she could.
In a Marie Clare article where she described the trip, she recounts swimming with a shark, whacking palm trees with a machete, making herself a shelter and boiling rice (one of the few items she brought with her) in coconut water, which “took like three hours and tasted really bad.” Her main takeaway? “I have learned that I am stronger than I thought. I am braver than I thought,” she wrote in Marie Clare.
8. Gwyneth reportedly nicknamed Winona Ryder ‘Vagina Ryder’
Following a falling out between Gwyneth and former housemate Winon Ryder, Gwyneth apparently adopted a slightly mean nickname for her fellow A-list actor pal. “Vagina Ryder.” You can’t say she’s not succinct!
9. Gwyneth was used as a ‘shiny rock’ to distract Harvey Weinstein
While Odell’s biography does highlight Paltrow’s privilege as a nepo baby and A-list wellness mogul, it’s not all easy for Gwyneth. The actress had a very difficult relationship with convicted criminal and former Miramax executive Harvey Weinstein, who once tried to sexually proposition Paltrow in his hotel room.
According to Odell’s biography, staff around Weinstein would bring in “shiny rocks” to distract him and quiet his temper, especially on flights. “[The shiny rocks] could be a new script or a new cut of a movie — but the best shiny rock of all was a movie star,” Odell writes. “Weinstein loved stars, and he behaved better when one was around.”
10. She offered a Goop employee a helicopter ride home
In a mark of Gwyneth being rather out of touch (but still ultimately generous), Odell notes how she once offered a Goop employee who’d driven out for a meeting at Gwyneth’s house a helicopter ride home, to save them from driving back. But the employee had to sadly decline “because they didn’t know what they’d do with the car they had driven there.”
