Amy Odell has written Gwyneth Paltrow: A Biography. Odell smartly gave out excerpts of the book to People Magazine and other outlets, and it’s creating so much buzz for the book. The excerpts are mostly focused on Gwyneth’s 1990s heyday, when she was the biggest It Girl ever and she went from being engaged to Brad Pitt to a chaotic on-and-off thing with Ben Affleck. Judging solely by our comment section, there are a lot of ‘90s girls who remember all of this well, and it’s nice to have some vintage gossip. Well, here’s something even more fun: remember how Gwyneth dissed Jennifer Aniston several times? Remember when Gwyneth dismissively referred to Aniston “that TV girl” when Brad Pitt and Aniston were dating? Well, if you can believe it, Gwyneth also bad-mouthed Pitt & Aniston privately too.
Gwyneth Paltrow, now 52, and Pitt, now 61, began dating after working together on David Fincher‘s horror classic Se7en in 1994, got engaged in 1996 and split in 1997. As revealed in Amy Odell‘s upcoming Gwyneth: The Biography, Paltrow, had a mournful reaction to Pitt’s 1999 much-covered wedding to fellow A-lister Jennifer Aniston — not that she shared it with the public.
As Odell writes, Paltrow got snappy during a September 2000 interview at the Toronto Film Festival premiere of Duets (starring Gwyneth and directed by her later father, Bruce Paltrow), calling a reporter “very gossipy” for a question about another ex, Ben Affleck. Things didn’t improve from there, as revealed in this book excerpt exclusive to Us Weekly:
The reporter then asked how she felt about Brad Pitt marrying Jennifer Aniston [in July of that year]. “Are you really asking me this question?” Gwyneth replied, her eyes now “daggers.” “I can’t comment on this kind of thing.” In reality, Gwyneth confided to friends that she’d felt sad when she learned they were getting married. (She was also fond of telling them that Brad “has terrible taste in women.”)
As most readers of Us likely recall, Pitt and Aniston got engaged in November 1999 and wed in Malibu on July 29, 2000 — ultimately divorcing five years later, in October 2005, as Pitt’s romance with his Mr. and Mrs. Smith costar Angelina Jolie heated up. That same year, during a business meeting with Aerin Lauder — a fellow Manhattan socialite and part of the Estee Lauder cosmetics dynasty which would sign Paltrow as the face of its Pleasures fragrance — she couldn’t resist taking a shot, Odell writes:
At one dinner, the two were talking about Brad Pitt. According to someone familiar with the discussion, Gwyneth allegedly told her, “He’s dumber than a sack of s–t.”
“He was brought up very religious, in Missouri,” Odell told People of the stark contrast between Paltrow and Pitt. “It’s just a very different world from hers, growing up in Manhattan, going to [elite private school] Spence, I think she thought he wasn’t sophisticated enough for her. She thought she was smarter, better educated, more sophisticated.”
The thing is, I think we’ve established that Gwyneth had good reasons for breaking off her engagement to Brad, and she was probably very happy to be out of that relationship. But in true Gwyneth fashion, she was just furious that Brad moved on to a different famous woman, and a television actress at that! As for Gwyneth telling people that Brad “has terrible taste in women”… lmao, what a self-own. I wonder if this biography contains any gossip about Gwyneth’s thoughts on Angelina Jolie? They worked together at one point and I don’t recall Gwyneth saying anything particularly juicy or noteworthy about Jolie in public. I’m sure she had many thoughts privately though.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
