Latest news with #biography
Daily Mail
12 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Shocking extent of Gwyneth Paltrow's privileged upbringing laid bare
Growing up with Hollywood royalty means Gwyneth Paltrow was privy to a luxurious lifestyle most cannot fathom, including extravagant dinners, elite private schools and preference for flying first class. Details of the 52-year-old actress' opulent childhood have now been laid bare in a new book, titled Gwyneth: The Biography, by biographer Amy Odell. In the tome, released on July 29, Odell recounted moments from the Goop founder's childhood, writing that her father, Bruce Paltrow, had a penchant for luxury goods - more than mom Blythe Danner - which trickled down to Gwyneth. 'Bruce was the indulger,' Odell noted in the book. 'Blythe the moderating influence.' Odell said the director and producer, who died in 2002, 'showed Gwyneth and [her younger brother] Jake a world that would bend to your will if you knew how to ask.' Meanwhile, the biographer noted that her mother, actress Blythe, was 'attuned to fragility, mortality, and the importance of manners.' Gwyneth moved to New York City with her family when she was 11 years old, in 1984, where she attended the exclusive Spence School. The future Academy Award winner moved into a five-story brownstone on the Upper East Side just steps from Central Park as she spent her days with the daughters of some of the country's most elite - and wealthy - families. However, Gwyneth, along with her Jake, continued to travel around with their parents for work - with Bruce opting to book first class while Blyth tended to book coach - much to Gwyneth's chagrin. According to Odell, when Bruce flew with his two kids, he booked first-class seats. 'When Bruce flew with the kids, he booked first-class seats. He would joke that Gwyneth didn't know how to turn right on an airplane (toward the coach seats),' the biographer wrote. 'Blythe tended to book coach,' it continued. '"You mean — we're not flying first-class?" Gwyneth would protest. "We're flying no class?"' According to the biography, the Paltrow family were never without a grand vacation or famous dinner guest - suggesting it is a trait Gwyneth picked up from her father. '[Bruce] liked to ski in Aspen with his family and his buddies during the winter, and, unsatisfied with the dining options, convinced Gordon Naccarato, a chef at Michael's in Los Angeles, to move there and open a restaurant, writing him a $125,000 check,' the biography reported. Odell also spoke of Bruce's indulgences in his every day life. 'His briefcase was Bottega Veneta, his stationery was Tiffany. He loved the luxury brands Asprey and Zegna. His socks were cashmere. He dressed in soft colors and soft fabrics, and clothes hung beautifully on him,' she wrote. According to the biography, the Paltrow family were never without a grand vacation or famous dinner guest - suggesting it is a trait Gwyneth picked up from her father 'In Los Angeles, he drove a black Mercedes with tan interior that he had bought one summer in Europe and decided to import, even though few gas stations pumped the leaded fuel it required.' Daily Mail has reached out to Gwyneth's representative for comment. Elsewhere, the biography also revisits Paltrow's discomfort while filming 1998 crime thriller A Perfect Murder opposite co-star Michael Douglas, who was cast as her husband despite being almost 30 years her senior. Paltrow, then 25, was reportedly uneasy with their romantic scenes, finding the experience 'creepy.' Odell's unauthorized biography of Paltrow has already seen explosive revelations about her previous relationships, including those with Brad Pitt and ex-husband Chris Martin, which Daily Mail has exclusively reported. But the book also delves into her ruthless climb to fame and petty grudges with fellow Hollywood heavyweights. In the late 90s, Paltrow's acclaim was on the rise although she had not yet starred in the role that would earn her the Oscar for Best Actress - Shakespeare in Love. Yet Odell writes that she had a habit of burning through friends on her way to the top, and that included Ryder. In a new interview with Vanity Fair, Odell revealed whether or not she had heard from Paltrow or her 'people' about the upcoming tell-all. 'I was in touch with her team over the course of the three-year process, pretty much most of that time,' Odell shared. She explained that she asked Paltrow's team over the course of those three year if the actress wanted to speak with her. 'Right around the time I finished, I got a no,' Odell said. The author also admitted that she had 'no idea' if Paltrow had read the book, responding: 'You would have to ask he.'
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Self-belief and sex eggs: 10 things we learned about Gwyneth Paltrow from an explosive new biography
When the author Amy Odell approached Gwyneth Paltrow's publicist about her plans for a biography of the actor, Goop founder and wellness pioneer, she was told that Paltrow would be glad to participate – if she was allowed to 'factcheck' the book. Odell didn't agree. Her line to Paltrow eventually fell silent, and her book, Gwyneth, has just been published to much buzz, without the star's participation. Paltrow, a source claimed to Odell, 'invented ghosting'. Now, post-publication, you can picture dozens more being cast out of her golden glow. Odell spoke to more than 220 people for her book, on and off the record; more rebuffed her. 'Many were terrified to talk about Gwyneth,' she writes. The result is nonetheless thoughtful, fair and fastidiously researched – even without Paltrow's oversight. It is also brimming over with gossip. Here are 10 standout topics. Paltrow's pedigree makes many of the 'nepo babies' (lately singled out for having been given a leg-up into Hollywood) look like competition winners. Her mother, Blythe Danner, is a critically acclaimed actor of stage and screen (best known to a younger generation as the mother in Meet the Parents). She met Bruce Paltrow when he was producing one of her plays. Gwyneth and her younger brother, Jake, grew up in a five-storey brownstone close to Central Park in New York. She attended the Spence school, a private girls' school on the Upper East Side, along with Mick Jagger's daughter Jade and the princesses Alexandra and Olga of Greece ('their last name just 'of Greece',' adds Odell). Her parents' connections came into play before she had even finished school. For her senior project, she covered a Bonnie Raitt song – accompanied by Steely Dan's singer, Donald Fagen. Soon after, at 19, she landed a speaking part in Hook, directed by Steven Spielberg – her godfather, 'Uncle Morty'. (He called her 'Gwynnie the Pooh'.) Many years later, Paltrow would tell Vanity Fair that fame had felt to her 'like a predestined thing' – that she had known her 'whole life that this was going to happen'. Blythe and Bruce weren't as confident that acting would work out, Odell writes: they wanted their daughter to have 'a backup plan'. After Paltrow was rejected from Vassar College, her parents asked their friend, two-time Academy Award-winner Michael Douglas, to put in a word at his alma mater. She was accepted by the University of California, Santa Barbara (Douglas gets it done!), but ended up dropping out. Studying film, she had been dismayed to find Uncle Morty on the syllabus. 'I'm sitting here learning about people I know,' another aspiring actor recalls Paltrow complaining. Bruce cut her off financially, and she was forced to get a waitressing gig (though again, through her parents' connections). 'I remember she was so mad about it,' the actor told Odell. Years later – after she had won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love, broken off her engagement to Brad Pitt and gone, according to one account, 'totally Hollywood' – Bruce sought again to keep his daughter humble, telling her she'd become 'kind of an asshole'. Paltrow was 'devastated', she said, but eventually grateful for the course correction. Fame had gone to her head, she admitted: 'There is nothing worse for the growth of a human being than not having obstacles and disappointments.' Pitt and Paltrow met in 1993, auditioning for Legends of the Fall. She was passed over for the part but made an impression on Pitt, who went on to suggest she play his character's wife in David Fincher's Se7en. Paltrow had also been offered Feeling Minnesota alongside Keanu Reeves. As she dithered, a helpful friend suggested: 'Who do you want to date, Brad Pitt or Keanu Reeves?' Paltrow said yes to Se7en. Not long into filming, she and Pitt were together – delighting her father, who reportedly crowed to a friend: 'Can you believe my daughter? It's fucking Brad Pitt!' According to Odell, Paltrow was never so certain, finding Pitt – from a southern, conservative, religious background – a bit beneath her. 'When we go to restaurants and order caviar, I have to say to Brad, 'This is beluga and this is oscietra,'' she told an interviewer. After two years together, they broke off their engagement. She went on to date Ben Affleck, who she found to be more her intellectual match (not to mention – as she disclosed only in 2023 – a 'technically excellent' lover). But Affleck's addiction issues, penchant for video games and what one of Paltrow's friends remembers as his 'kind of miserable' vibe prevented the relationship from progressing. Cigarettes may have been Paltrow's first love. She started smoking in her first year at Spence, much to Bruce's displeasure. Seeking to get his teenage daughter to quit, he once again leaned on his connections, calling in a favour with his friend's son's new wife – AKA Madonna – asking her to 'write a note to Gwyneth to discourage her'. According to Odell, Madonna happily played model, describing her average day: 'I wake up, I don't smoke … And I go home a happy healthy me. … PS: Good girls live longer.' Gwyneth showed the letter off at school, then displayed it, framed, in her bedroom – and continued to smoke 'a pack a day, probably' until she was 25. She eventually quit in September 1997 after spending three days marooned on a deserted island in Belize. Paltrow had requested the experience as a condition of guest-editing an issue of Marie Claire. Magazine budgets were bigger back then. Odell describes Paltrow as being ambivalent about fame – and scornful of 'tacky, pointless, big, fluffy, unimportant movies'. She found her professional home in Miramax Films, Harvey Weinstein's production company, after being cast in the 1996 adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma. Odell describes Weinstein working hard to make Paltrow a star, throwing his formidable weight and influence behind her Oscar bid for Shakespeare in Love. Her 1999 triumph over Cate Blanchett (nominated for Elizabeth) was later attributed to Weinstein's intense campaign. Even Paltrow had her doubts, betting a pair of CAA agents $10,000 she wouldn't win. (She made good, going to the bank the morning after the ceremony.) But being Weinstein's 'golden girl' didn't come without costs, least of all pressure to do lacklustre parts or press. As Paltrow told the New York Times for their seismic #MeToo report, early in her working relationship with Weinstein, he made a pass at her at a Beverly Hills hotel. (Weinstein disputed her account.) In their book She Said, the journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey describe Paltrow's pivotal role in their investigation. 'When so many other actresses were reluctant to get on the phone and scared to tell the truth … Gwyneth was actually one of the first.' As well as having been born rich, beautiful and well connected, Paltrow is described by Odell as possessing some 'exceptional, if hard to define' X-factor, registering as far back as her school days. This worked against her as much as it did in her favour. Even before becoming an Oscar winner aged 26, Paltrow feared overexposure in the press. Her tearful acceptance speech, coupled with news that her father bought her the diamond necklace she'd been loaned for the ceremony, turned the public against her. Building women up before tearing them down is now a well-worn cycle, Odell notes, pointing to Anne Hathaway and Blake Lively (you might also add Jennifer Lawrence and Taylor Swift). Paltrow was one of the first victims, if not the blueprint. In 2013, she was named Star magazine's most hated celebrity, 19 spots above Chris Brown, who had been arrested for assaulting Rihanna four years earlier. 'Gwyneth would never manage to outrun' the contempt, Odell writes – perhaps influencing her subsequent decision to make it work for her with Goop. Paltrow was ahead of the curve with many modern movements and trends; body positivity was emphatically not one of them. Schoolmates recall her evident 'disdain for fat people'. One remembered changing into swimsuits next to the 'naturally skinny' Gwyneth, and her comment: 'Isn't it interesting how different people's bodies are?' In her senior yearbook, alongside Gwyneth's chosen quote from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, editors specified her nightmare: 'Obesity'. Later, when she was famous, she allegedly paid for a school friend to undergo an abdominoplasty (or 'tummy tuck'). Paltrow's defining interest in healthy eating, alternative medicine and 'wellness' began after her father was diagnosed with throat cancer. While caring for Bruce, she began researching preservatives, pesticides and environmental toxins; she started following a macrobiotic diet and doing nearly two hours of yoga before dawn, six days a week. Meanwhile, she was also shooting Shallow Hal, 'spending her working hours in a fat suit', Odell observes. Doing press, Paltrow described the film as a 'love letter', and the experience of making it as edifying. 'I got a real sense of what it would be like to be that overweight, and every pretty girl should be forced to do that.' Along with her passion for 'alternative' ideas of health, the seeds for Goop had been sown years earlier, on the sets of Jefferson in Paris and The Talented Mr Ripley. In Paris and Ischia, Paltrow tapped local crew for their recommendations for the best hotels, restaurants and shopping on location – insider info around which she would later build a lifestyle brand. In 2007, she shot a public television show about Spanish cuisine – 'a novel premise' at the time, Odell notes (and one that riled the late Anthony Bourdain, who said of the series: 'Why would you go to Spain with the one bitch who refuses to eat ham?'). Paltrow was married to Coldplay's Chris Martin by then, with two young children, and she was beginning to tire of acting. After the success of Iron Man in 2008, she turned to her side project: an online newsletter. Goop sought to 'nourish the inner aspect', but timing was not on its side. The website launched the week after the stock market crash; Jezebel declared Paltrow 'about as publicly savvy as Marie Antoinette'. Yet she was proved right in her instinct to let them eat banana-nut muffins (her inaugural recipe). In 2008, the wellness industry 'was barely even measured', Odell writes; today it is valued in the trillions. Paltrow was probably one of the first celebrities to conceive of herself as a brand, paving the way for today's saturation of product lines and endorsement deals – and shaping consumer culture. Among the trends and treatments she helped to popularise were Spanx, cupping, gluten-free diets and, more recently, mouth-taping. Even the bonkers ones took off with Goop's endorsement. After a 'vaginal steaming' treatment featured in its 2015 Santa Monica city guide, bookings doubled. Odell describes Paltrow being unfazed by controversy, and even relishing it as good for business. In 2017, Goop went viral for featuring an egg-shaped stone, designed to be inserted vaginally and worn (?) overnight (!) so as to 'balance the cycle' and 'invigorate our life force'. In a staff meeting, Paltrow was reportedly staunch in the face of ridicule: 'Goop defined the concept of modern wellness … Let's own it.' Once again, she was right. The company had ordered 600 'Yoni' eggs; after the backlash, the waiting list to buy them, for about $60 each, was 2,000 names long. When Goop was sued the next year by regulators for making allegedly unlawful health claims, Paltrow chose to pay $145,000 to settle, without admitting wrongdoing; the claims about the eggs disappeared from Goop's website, but they were still on sale earlier this year. Odell notes the irony: for all Paltrow's enthusiasm to factcheck her biography, she was not so exacting or hands-on with the articles published on Goop. Among the famously dubious claims platformed by the site were the healing powers of celery juice and raw (unpasteurised) goat milk, a possible link between bras and breast cancer, and every word uttered by Anthony William, the so-called 'medical medium'. ('We used him when we needed page views,' one former Goop employee admitted to Odell.) Odell makes a valiant effort to factcheck every claim she references in her book, quoting medical experts and Paltrow's many critics to counterbalance all the Goop. But, at a certain point in the narrative, you sense it become futile: wellness is no longer a celebrity foible, a trapping of 'Gwyneth's extravagant and eccentric life', but the water we are all drowning in. On social media, influencers – many in Paltrow's image – spread advice with little oversight or regulation, while trends have had to become more extreme to cut through the noise. After 20 years of Goop, the world has become harder to shock, more receptive to 'alternative' ideas of health and medicine, and even sceptical of science. Today the wellness industry is as big as the US pharmaceutical and agricultural industries combined. By stoking fear about 'toxins', encouraging people to 'do their own research' and seeding distrust in the medical establishment, Paltrow – Odell suggests – paved the way for the conspiratorial, anti-expert, post-truth thinking now embedded in Donald Trump's White House. Both Paltrow and Robert F Kennedy Jr – Trump's vaccine sceptic secretary for health and human services – are avowed fans of raw milk; the real harbinger of end-times will be if she starts eating red meat. Meanwhile, Paltrow continues to sail through with the seemingly untouchable self-belief that has made her such a compelling celebrity to adore, abhor and emulate. 'She is fucking borderline brilliant,' Odell quotes a former Goop executive as saying. 'GP knows exactly what she's doing.'
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Self-belief and sex eggs: 10 things we learned about Gwyneth Paltrow from an explosive new biography
When the author Amy Odell approached Gwyneth Paltrow's publicist about her plans for a biography of the actor, Goop founder and wellness pioneer, she was told that Paltrow would be glad to participate – if she was allowed to 'factcheck' the book. Odell didn't agree. Her line to Paltrow eventually fell silent, and her book, Gwyneth, has just been published to much buzz, without the star's participation. Paltrow, a source claimed to Odell, 'invented ghosting'. Now, post-publication, you can picture dozens more being cast out of her golden glow. Odell spoke to more than 220 people for her book, on and off the record; more rebuffed her. 'Many were terrified to talk about Gwyneth,' she writes. The result is nonetheless thoughtful, fair and fastidiously researched – even without Paltrow's oversight. It is also brimming over with gossip. Here are 10 standout topics. Paltrow's pedigree makes many of the 'nepo babies' (lately singled out for having been given a leg-up into Hollywood) look like competition winners. Her mother, Blythe Danner, is a critically acclaimed actor of stage and screen (best known to a younger generation as the mother in Meet the Parents). She met Bruce Paltrow when he was producing one of her plays. Gwyneth and her younger brother, Jake, grew up in a five-storey brownstone close to Central Park in New York. She attended the Spence school, a private girls' school on the Upper East Side, along with Mick Jagger's daughter Jade and the princesses Alexandra and Olga of Greece ('their last name just 'of Greece',' adds Odell). Her parents' connections came into play before she had even finished school. For her senior project, she covered a Bonnie Raitt song – accompanied by Steely Dan's singer, Donald Fagen. Soon after, at 19, she landed a speaking part in Hook, directed by Steven Spielberg – her godfather, 'Uncle Morty'. (He called her 'Gwynnie the Pooh'.) Many years later, Paltrow would tell Vanity Fair that fame had felt to her 'like a predestined thing' – that she had known her 'whole life that this was going to happen'. Blythe and Bruce weren't as confident that acting would work out, Odell writes: they wanted their daughter to have 'a backup plan'. After Paltrow was rejected from Vassar College, her parents asked their friend, two-time Academy Award-winner Michael Douglas, to put in a word at his alma mater. She was accepted by the University of California, Santa Barbara (Douglas gets it done!), but ended up dropping out. Studying film, she had been dismayed to find Uncle Morty on the syllabus. 'I'm sitting here learning about people I know,' another aspiring actor recalls Paltrow complaining. Bruce cut her off financially, and she was forced to get a waitressing gig (though again, through her parents' connections). 'I remember she was so mad about it,' the actor told Odell. Years later – after she had won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love, broken off her engagement to Brad Pitt and gone, according to one account, 'totally Hollywood' – Bruce sought again to keep his daughter humble, telling her she'd become 'kind of an asshole'. Paltrow was 'devastated', she said, but eventually grateful for the course correction. Fame had gone to her head, she admitted: 'There is nothing worse for the growth of a human being than not having obstacles and disappointments.' Pitt and Paltrow met in 1993, auditioning for Legends of the Fall. She was passed over for the part but made an impression on Pitt, who went on to suggest she play his character's wife in David Fincher's Se7en. Paltrow had also been offered Feeling Minnesota alongside Keanu Reeves. As she dithered, a helpful friend suggested: 'Who do you want to date, Brad Pitt or Keanu Reeves?' Paltrow said yes to Se7en. Not long into filming, she and Pitt were together – delighting her father, who reportedly crowed to a friend: 'Can you believe my daughter? It's fucking Brad Pitt!' According to Odell, Paltrow was never so certain, finding Pitt – from a southern, conservative, religious background – a bit beneath her. 'When we go to restaurants and order caviar, I have to say to Brad, 'This is beluga and this is oscietra,'' she told an interviewer. After two years together, they broke off their engagement. She went on to date Ben Affleck, who she found to be more her intellectual match (not to mention – as she disclosed only in 2023 – a 'technically excellent' lover). But Affleck's addiction issues, penchant for video games and what one of Paltrow's friends remembers as his 'kind of miserable' vibe prevented the relationship from progressing. Cigarettes may have been Paltrow's first love. She started smoking in her first year at Spence, much to Bruce's displeasure. Seeking to get his teenage daughter to quit, he once again leaned on his connections, calling in a favour with his friend's son's new wife – AKA Madonna – asking her to 'write a note to Gwyneth to discourage her'. According to Odell, Madonna happily played model, describing her average day: 'I wake up, I don't smoke … And I go home a happy healthy me. … PS: Good girls live longer.' Gwyneth showed the letter off at school, then displayed it, framed, in her bedroom – and continued to smoke 'a pack a day, probably' until she was 25. She eventually quit in September 1997 after spending three days marooned on a deserted island in Belize. Paltrow had requested the experience as a condition of guest-editing an issue of Marie Claire. Magazine budgets were bigger back then. Odell describes Paltrow as being ambivalent about fame – and scornful of 'tacky, pointless, big, fluffy, unimportant movies'. She found her professional home in Miramax Films, Harvey Weinstein's production company, after being cast in the 1996 adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma. Odell describes Weinstein working hard to make Paltrow a star, throwing his formidable weight and influence behind her Oscar bid for Shakespeare in Love. Her 1999 triumph over Cate Blanchett (nominated for Elizabeth) was later attributed to Weinstein's intense campaign. Even Paltrow had her doubts, betting a pair of CAA agents $10,000 she wouldn't win. (She made good, going to the bank the morning after the ceremony.) But being Weinstein's 'golden girl' didn't come without costs, least of all pressure to do lacklustre parts or press. As Paltrow told the New York Times for their seismic #MeToo report, early in her working relationship with Weinstein, he made a pass at her at a Beverly Hills hotel. (Weinstein disputed her account.) In their book She Said, the journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey describe Paltrow's pivotal role in their investigation. 'When so many other actresses were reluctant to get on the phone and scared to tell the truth … Gwyneth was actually one of the first.' As well as having been born rich, beautiful and well connected, Paltrow is described by Odell as possessing some 'exceptional, if hard to define' X-factor, registering as far back as her school days. This worked against her as much as it did in her favour. Even before becoming an Oscar winner aged 26, Paltrow feared overexposure in the press. Her tearful acceptance speech, coupled with news that her father bought her the diamond necklace she'd been loaned for the ceremony, turned the public against her. Building women up before tearing them down is now a well-worn cycle, Odell notes, pointing to Anne Hathaway and Blake Lively (you might also add Jennifer Lawrence and Taylor Swift). Paltrow was one of the first victims, if not the blueprint. In 2013, she was named Star magazine's most hated celebrity, 19 spots above Chris Brown, who had been arrested for assaulting Rihanna four years earlier. 'Gwyneth would never manage to outrun' the contempt, Odell writes – perhaps influencing her subsequent decision to make it work for her with Goop. Paltrow was ahead of the curve with many modern movements and trends; body positivity was emphatically not one of them. Schoolmates recall her evident 'disdain for fat people'. One remembered changing into swimsuits next to the 'naturally skinny' Gwyneth, and her comment: 'Isn't it interesting how different people's bodies are?' In her senior yearbook, alongside Gwyneth's chosen quote from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, editors specified her nightmare: 'Obesity'. Later, when she was famous, she allegedly paid for a school friend to undergo an abdominoplasty (or 'tummy tuck'). Paltrow's defining interest in healthy eating, alternative medicine and 'wellness' began after her father was diagnosed with throat cancer. While caring for Bruce, she began researching preservatives, pesticides and environmental toxins; she started following a macrobiotic diet and doing nearly two hours of yoga before dawn, six days a week. Meanwhile, she was also shooting Shallow Hal, 'spending her working hours in a fat suit', Odell observes. Doing press, Paltrow described the film as a 'love letter', and the experience of making it as edifying. 'I got a real sense of what it would be like to be that overweight, and every pretty girl should be forced to do that.' Along with her passion for 'alternative' ideas of health, the seeds for Goop had been sown years earlier, on the sets of Jefferson in Paris and The Talented Mr Ripley. In Paris and Ischia, Paltrow tapped local crew for their recommendations for the best hotels, restaurants and shopping on location – insider info around which she would later build a lifestyle brand. In 2007, she shot a public television show about Spanish cuisine – 'a novel premise' at the time, Odell notes (and one that riled the late Anthony Bourdain, who said of the series: 'Why would you go to Spain with the one bitch who refuses to eat ham?'). Paltrow was married to Coldplay's Chris Martin by then, with two young children, and she was beginning to tire of acting. After the success of Iron Man in 2008, she turned to her side project: an online newsletter. Goop sought to 'nourish the inner aspect', but timing was not on its side. The website launched the week after the stock market crash; Jezebel declared Paltrow 'about as publicly savvy as Marie Antoinette'. Yet she was proved right in her instinct to let them eat banana-nut muffins (her inaugural recipe). In 2008, the wellness industry 'was barely even measured', Odell writes; today it is valued in the trillions. Paltrow was probably one of the first celebrities to conceive of herself as a brand, paving the way for today's saturation of product lines and endorsement deals – and shaping consumer culture. Among the trends and treatments she helped to popularise were Spanx, cupping, gluten-free diets and, more recently, mouth-taping. Even the bonkers ones took off with Goop's endorsement. After a 'vaginal steaming' treatment featured in its 2015 Santa Monica city guide, bookings doubled. Odell describes Paltrow being unfazed by controversy, and even relishing it as good for business. In 2017, Goop went viral for featuring an egg-shaped stone, designed to be inserted vaginally and worn (?) overnight (!) so as to 'balance the cycle' and 'invigorate our life force'. In a staff meeting, Paltrow was reportedly staunch in the face of ridicule: 'Goop defined the concept of modern wellness … Let's own it.' Once again, she was right. The company had ordered 600 'Yoni' eggs; after the backlash, the waiting list to buy them, for about $60 each, was 2,000 names long. When Goop was sued the next year by regulators for making allegedly unlawful health claims, Paltrow chose to pay $145,000 to settle, without admitting wrongdoing; the claims about the eggs disappeared from Goop's website, but they were still on sale earlier this year. Odell notes the irony: for all Paltrow's enthusiasm to factcheck her biography, she was not so exacting or hands-on with the articles published on Goop. Among the famously dubious claims platformed by the site were the healing powers of celery juice and raw (unpasteurised) goat milk, a possible link between bras and breast cancer, and every word uttered by Anthony William, the so-called 'medical medium'. ('We used him when we needed page views,' one former Goop employee admitted to Odell.) Odell makes a valiant effort to factcheck every claim she references in her book, quoting medical experts and Paltrow's many critics to counterbalance all the Goop. But, at a certain point in the narrative, you sense it become futile: wellness is no longer a celebrity foible, a trapping of 'Gwyneth's extravagant and eccentric life', but the water we are all drowning in. On social media, influencers – many in Paltrow's image – spread advice with little oversight or regulation, while trends have had to become more extreme to cut through the noise. After 20 years of Goop, the world has become harder to shock, more receptive to 'alternative' ideas of health and medicine, and even sceptical of science. Today the wellness industry is as big as the US pharmaceutical and agricultural industries combined. By stoking fear about 'toxins', encouraging people to 'do their own research' and seeding distrust in the medical establishment, Paltrow – Odell suggests – paved the way for the conspiratorial, anti-expert, post-truth thinking now embedded in Donald Trump's White House. Both Paltrow and Robert F Kennedy Jr – Trump's vaccine sceptic secretary for health and human services – are avowed fans of raw milk; the real harbinger of end-times will be if she starts eating red meat. Meanwhile, Paltrow continues to sail through with the seemingly untouchable self-belief that has made her such a compelling celebrity to adore, abhor and emulate. 'She is fucking borderline brilliant,' Odell quotes a former Goop executive as saying. 'GP knows exactly what she's doing.'
Irish Times
6 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Gwyneth: The Biography review - Gwyneth Paltrow's world is notoriously hard to break into. This book takes a shot
Gwyneth: The Biography Author : Amy Odell ISBN-13 : 9781805465713 Publisher : Atlantic Guideline Price : €15.99 Gwyneth: The Biography opens, where else, with the vaginal egg, an episode that has come to stand for Paltrow's general ability to sell dumb ideas to credulous rich women using widespread mockery as her marketing rocket fuel. (In case you need a reminder: this was the $66 jade egg Paltrow sold via her lifestyle brand Goop that promised various health benefits upon insertion.) Amy Odell's book, billed as delivering 'insight and behind-the-scenes details of Paltrow's relationships, family, friendships, iconic films', as well as her creation of Goop, takes no particular stand on this, nor on many of Paltrow's more divisive episodes, instead offering us what feels like an earnest jog back through the actor and wellness guru's years of fame. The author writes in the acknowledgments that she spoke to 220 people for the book, in which case we have to assume that a great many of them had little to say. To be fair to Odell, whose previous biography was of Anna Wintour , another difficult and controlling subject – although Wintour did give Odell some access – Paltrow's world is notoriously hard to break into if she's not on board with a project; the author quotes numerous hacks tasked with profiling Paltrow for magazines who found themselves iced out of her networks, and the same happens to Odell in the early stages of research. Odell's task only gets harder in the second half of the book, which tackles the Goop years. Since, she claims, many of its staff signed NDAs, those sections lack even the modest stream of gossip that enlivens the first half. [ I'm pulling the Goop plug – no jade eggs are going in my yoni Opens in new window ] Which, by the way, is perfectly enjoyable. I ripped through Odell's account of Paltrow's youth as the simultaneously indulged and benignly neglected daughter of two show business big guns, the actor Blythe Danner and the producer and director Bruce Paltrow. Danner is prim and unemotional; Bruce Paltrow is more demonstrative but still emotionally evasive, and Odell reheats some well-documented episodes between father and daughter, such as the trip they made to Paris when Paltrow was about 10, during which Bruce told her: 'I wanted you to see Paris for the first time with a man who will always love you, no matter what.' (Paltrow, in interviews, has always offered up this story as a moving tribute to her dad's love for her.) Odell also tells us the (I think) new detail that, when Paltrow was older, 'her dad once gave her lace underwear as a gift'. It's a small addition but it stands out against what feels like the book's trove of reconstituted material. In 1984, when Paltrow was 12, the family moved from LA to New York . We learn that she felt outclassed at Spence, the Upper East Side private school where the money is older and the blood bluer than in the Danner-Paltrow household. We also learn that, in spite of this, Paltrow – whose biggest nightmare is listed in the senior school yearbook as 'obesity' – manages to form a clique around herself that may or may not have been involved in the drawing of a penis on the library wall. It's small potatoes but we'll take it. READ MORE Odell goes into great depth about the Williamstown theatre festival – presumably because the old theatre lags actually agreed to talk to her – a storied annual event in rural Massachusetts where Danner takes her daughter every summer, first to watch her mother on stage, and later, to act herself. I liked these passages, in which you get a real sense of a summer stock scene that has always attracted top actors and their nepo babies. At one point, a barely teenage Paltrow takes the assistant director's seat and the head of the festival fails to ask her to move. Paltrow is entitled, wan, sometimes foul-mouthed, intensely focused and in these scenes, really comes alive. By studying her mother on stage, she learns how to be an actor. And so on to the Hollywood years, where everything becomes less fresh and more familiar. We slog through the background to productions of Emma, Shallow Hal and Shakespeare in Love and then we get to Harvey Weinstein , who during the first flush of #MeToo, Paltrow accused of making a pass at her. Odell quotes from Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey's book, She Said, but there's not much more to be harvested on a story broken and pursued by such good reporters. What's left is a trawl through a lot of things we already know – although there is one very funny motif from those years, which involves Paltrow miming throwing up behind the backs of people she dislikes, one of whom is Minnie Driver . (Team Driver all the way, here, obviously.) Also an old friend of Paltrow's claims 'she invented ghosting', which sounds about right. Finally, Goop: this was a story I hadn't been paying much attention to lately, and so a genuine surprise of the book is to learn that the company founded by Paltrow in 2008 has been a much shakier business than advertised. We know that Goop paid to settle a lawsuit brought by the California Food, Drug and Medical Device Task Force over false claims about the health benefits of the vaginal eggs. And we also know it accepted judgments by the US National Advertising Division about other false claims. But, as Odell puts it, Paltrow's 'middling run as the CEO of Goop' has ensured that the company 'hasn't experienced sustained profitability … and has lacked a clear business strategy as it pingpongs from one of Gwyneth's ideas to the next'. Here's a reveal: that Paltrow is such a massive cheapskate she used Goop's food editors to cook for her. 'In the office,' writes Odell, 'it was common knowledge that the food editors would go to Gwyneth's house after work and make her dinner under the guise of 'recipe testing'. When she and Brad Falchuk were living apart, the food editor would bring dinner to his house, too, which wasn't a light lift in LA traffic.' She also asked vendors to donate their services to her and Falchuk's wedding in return for advertising. Gwyneth Paltrow at a special screening of The Goop Lab in Los Angeles, California, on January 21st, 2020. Photograph:The difficulty with all this is that Paltrow is a charmless subject who never rises to the level of monstrous. She's an actor, a so-so businesswoman – Kim Kardashian , as Odell points out, has had much greater success with her company, Skims. The story, then, is less about how Paltrow became this figure in the culture than why on earth she was elevated in the first place. Odell doesn't have the time or the inclination to get into this, instead offering pat lines such as, 'love her or hate her, for over 30 years, we haven't been able to look away'. At the very end, Odell draws a line between Paltrow's peddling of pseudoscience on Goop and Robert F Kennedy Jr, 'a fellow raw milk drinker' and Trump's vaccine-sceptical health secretary, which feels like a sudden turn towards a more interesting and confident authorial voice. If only it had piloted the whole book. – Guardian Gwyneth: The Biography by Amy Odell is published by Atlantic
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Gwyneth Paltrow's savage nickname for Winona Ryder revealed: book
Gwyneth Paltrow's alleged nasty nickname for Winona Ryder was revealed in Amy Odell's bombshell new biography about the Goop founder, titled 'Gwyneth.' Paltrow allegedly started calling her ex-pal 'Vagina Ryder' after suspecting Ryder was making up stories for attention in the 1990s, per the Daily Mail. Odell claimed the duo's fallout happened shortly after Paltrow split from Brad Pitt — whom she dated from 1994 to 1997 — and moved into Ryder's New York City apartment. At the time, Ryder, now 53, was dating Matt Damon while Paltrow, now 52, began a romance with Damon's best friend, Ben Affleck. According to Odell, Ryder and Damon once got into a fight and she rushed to tell him she had been robbed. Odell claimed this happened twice, and Damon was empathetic to his then-girlfriend. Meanwhile, Paltrow allegedly believed that the 'Stranger Things' star was making up the robberies for the sake of attention. 'Damon consoled her, but Gwyneth and Affleck believed Ryder fabricated the robberies as a ploy for attention (there's no proof of this),' Odell writes in the book, per the Daily Mail. 'Gwyneth was annoyed that Damon couldn't see it. Though Damon was kind to her friends, Gwyneth didn't seem to like him after that.' 'Her friendship with Ryder would only deteriorate further, and Gwyneth gave her the nickname 'Vagina Ryder,'' Odell claims. Reps for Paltrow and Ryder weren't immediately available to Page Six for comment. Elsewhere in the book, Odell claims, per People, that Paltrow swiped the lead of 1998's 'Shakespeare in Love' from Ryder after originally turning it down. 'After a story about Gwyneth allegedly stealing the script from Winona's coffee table reached the media, Gwyneth told friends that Ryder had started the rumor, and insisted she'd received the script through her agent,' the author alleges. While Ryder or Paltrow never addressed their alleged feud, the latter previously spoke of a 'frenemy' who wanted to see her demise in a 2009 Goop blog post. 'Back in the day, I had a 'frenemy' who, as it turned out, was pretty hell-bent on taking me down,' Paltrow wrote at the time. 'This person really did what they could to hurt me.' 'I was deeply upset, I was angry, I was all of those things you feel when you find out that someone you thought you liked was venomous and dangerous,' the 'Iron Man' star continued. 'I restrained myself from fighting back. … But one day I heard that something unfortunate and humiliating had happened to this person. And my reaction was deep relief and happiness.' Odell also details Paltrow's alleged friendship fallout with Madonna in the book. Solve the daily Crossword
