Gwyneth Paltrow has a supporting role in Marty Supreme, the Josh Safdie film starring Timothee Chalamet. People make such a big deal about how Gwyneth is retired or semi-retired from acting, but it honestly doesn’t feel that way to me. Probably because even though she’s not working consistently as an actress, she’s always around, she’s always got other projects, and it’s never like she’s some elusive celebrity. In fact, I think Gwyneth is more “accessible” than ever, likely because she has to be as the head of a brand (Goop). Anyway, Gwyneth covers the November issue of British Vogue. The cover profile is sycophantic in that very particular British way (derogatory), but it works because Gwyneth really opens to people who slavishly kiss her ass. Some highlights:
Being so famous for so many years: “It is quite something, being this person in the culture for all these years. It is a lot to hold because energy is real. The superstring physicists proved this. A molecule flying towards someone can change direction with intention, with thought behind it. To me it feels real. So to your point, I’m pretty good at being able to weather the storms, but sometimes there’s an accumulation of energy that makes me feel pretty fragile. Ultimately I’m just a mammal like anyone, but I’m expected to have this superhuman capacity to body all of this energy and thought.”
Amy Odell’s biography of Gwyneth: “So my husband flicked through it, just because I was like: ‘What is in this?’ He said, ‘It’s as if somebody put in a prompt in ChatGPT and said: mine every Daily Mail article and write a biography about Gwyneth Paltrow.’ [Odell] totally missed everything, the truth of who I am, what my impact is. He was like, ‘It’s just bad. It’s really badly written.’ I was like, ‘OK.’ The stuff that I saw in People magazine, and [other outlets that picked it up], it was all rubbish, the things that I supposedly said. I think it’s very sexist. I was like, ‘OK, hang on a sec. Why do the men get Walter Isaacson and I get this hack?’ You know?”
Her style: “I do love fashion, I really do. I think it’s going in a bit of a funny direction these days, so I’ll bring back my old school…. The thing about me is my style doesn’t really change that much. I believe in tailoring and a certain restraint, but always with a little bit of a twist to it. You know?”
She didn’t know anything about Timothee Chalamet when they first met: “I first met him at the costume test. I was asking him questions, trying to get to know him… Everyone makes fun of me because I don’t know anything. I was like, ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ And he was like, ‘I do.’ He mentioned that she had kids and I was like, ‘That’s so cool. I really love to hear that [from] a young man like you.’ I understand a 45-year-old who has his own kids going out with a woman with kids, but it’s a cool choice to go out with a young woman who has two kids. I respect it. I think it’s kind of punk rock. But my point is I didn’t know [it was] Kylie Jenner…”
Her mom-friends were impressed that she worked with Chalamet: “Oh my God, all of my mom group chats were on fire,” she says of the day when images of her and Chalamet pashing in costume disseminated near-live across the internet. What was the tone? “Everyone was like, ‘Yes, GP, get it!’ I’m like, ‘Guys, calm down,’” she adds quickly, though I’d be remiss not to report that a “still got it” smile is tickling the corners of her mouth.
Whether Goop has a toxic work culture: “That bothers me. ‘Oh, Goop has a toxic culture.’ That drives me insane because we have never had that. Granted we’ve had a couple of toxic people and, because of my fear of confrontation, maybe I didn’t deal with it quickly enough. That does cascade down and I totally take responsibility for that. But we are such a good culture. We are…It’s something that I am so proud of and worked so hard on, and… Of course, I’m going to say: ‘It’s not a toxic culture,’” she regroups slightly. And people have different experiences, I suggest. “Of course! We are all human beings who go to work, sometimes with unresolved stuff and that comes out. People can have bad work experiences anywhere. But I can guarantee if I dropped you into the Goop office in Santa Monica, you’d be like: ‘What the f-ck are these people talking about?’ You would see really engaged, really brilliant, highly collaborative teams who are excited. So I don’t like that kind of stuff – it impacts the team.”
Her last cigarette: “Oh, sadly I remember it well. It was the night we got married seven years ago. We were redoing our paperwork and I got life insurance, and it said that if anything happened to me and they knew that I had smoked a cigarette, it would nullify the whole thing. Because I’m such an Enneagram 1 – which is like, ‘integrity is everything’ – I never smoked again.” Well, it’s probably for the best. “I miss it, though. I was saying to Brad, maybe when I’m 85, I’ll start again. That’d be so awesome.”
Last time she had junk food: “Oh, last night. A friend came over and I ate a chocolate-covered Oreo. That is trans fats to the max. That’s, like, seed oils all the way. But once in a while it’s so important to follow those cravings. I love it.” Her 50s have tempered her in many ways. “I think it’s all about balance. Going too strongly in any direction is never good…. I was really, really strict on it for a while. But I’m not so strict in my old age. I’m much easier on myself, I would say.”
Conscious uncoupling: “There’s a lot of hurt around divorce. It’s a difficult subject and I think why people got so upset was that they heard, ‘Well, then, we did it wrong’ or ‘My parents did it wrong,’ which I understand. But it was really because we had so many friends who had been so hurt by divorce that we wanted to try to do it a different way. I’m still so proud that we did that and that we live it. I cannot tell you how many people come up to me and thank me for that, and for helping to create that template. I feel like there needs to be a book, because it was real trial and error. We f–ked a lot of things up and then we got a lot of things right.”
I could really hear her nasal voice with so many of these quotes. She ate ONE Oreo, you guys! Trans fats to the max! I actually believe she ate one Oreo, but I also believe she still tries weird fad diets and I still believe she has a really f–ked up relationship with food and nutrition. The story about Brad Falchuk reading the Odell biography and describing it to her… lmao. Gwyneth was paying attention, and she probably read some of it too. While she hates the book, she’s secretly pleased that her life and times warranted a sensationalized biography. The stuff about Chalamet and not knowing that his girlfriend is Kylie Jenner is so funny. It reminded me of how she A) forgot that she was in a Spider-Man movie and B) had to be introduced to Sebastian Stan multiple times.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid. Cover courtesy of British Vogue.
