3 months ago
23
By Nathan Smith
August 6, 2025 — 12.00pm
BIOGRAPHY
Gwyneth: The Biography
Amy Odell
Atlantic, $36.99
Conscious uncoupling. Vaginal steaming. “Bio-frequency” body stickers.
Gwyneth Paltrow, the Academy Award-winning actress and founder of lifestyle behemoth Goop, is one celebrity who often invites more contempt than kindness. Her lifestyle brand has long promoted dubious health claims and suspect wellness practices (from learning to yawn again to drinking raw goat’s milk to kill parasites). The actor’s own elitist comments tend to linger in the online zeitgeist, mocked and memed over: “I would rather die than let my kid eat Cup-a-Soup,” is one quote of many.
An “It” girl of the 1990s, Paltrow has learned from decades in the spotlight to leverage infamy to harness our attention. It’s a career-long play Amy Odell now exposes in her delightful biography Gwyneth. Dishy and sometimes damning, the book is based on hundreds of interviews and reveals a calculating and charismatic celebrity who was the first to package and sell us a rarefied lifestyle – at a high price. (Paltrow refused to participate in the book.)
Author of behind-the-curtains biography Anna on Anna Wintour, Odell begins with one image burnished in our cultural memory: Paltrow winning the Best Actress Oscar for Shakespeare in Love. In a soft pink “princess” gown and six-figure diamond necklace, sobbing through her acceptance speech, Paltrow may have appeared vulnerable on stage, but many were still suspect about her sincerity. She appeared, as Odell says, “without an ounce of relatability”.
Paltrow in the Netflix series about her wellness brand, Sex, Love & Goop.Credit: Netflix
That may be a result of her patrician upbringing as the “nepo” daughter of actress Blythe Danner and TV producer Bruce Paltrow. Her education started at the elite private girls’ school Spence and ended with a brief stint in university (after dad called in a favour) before she quit to pursue acting. Gritty roles in films Flesh and Bone and Seven put her on the map before Harvey Weinstein circled.
After signing up with the disgraced film producer, Weinstein sexually harassed her in a hotel room, an incident that prompted then-boyfriend Brad Pitt to confront him at a film premiere. Paltrow, who “asked that their relationship remain professional”, continued working at a distance with Weinstein and enjoyed success with period films Emma and Shakespeare in Love.
After a series of flops (including Duets and Shallow Hal), Paltrow shifted gears, focusing on cultivating a personal life – and a personal brand. A marriage to Coldplay frontman Chris Martin bore two children, Moses and the infamous “Apple”, while film roles were taken that guaranteed lucrative financial returns (Iron Man).
It was her father’s death at 58 from cancer, Odell explains, that galvanised Paltrow’s obsession with healthy living and set her on the path of marketing her sanitised lifestyle. With Goop, Paltrow became one of the first celebrities to push a luxurious wellbeing brand before the “wellness boom” of the 2010s hit.
Loading
Gwyneth’s own time dictating her media image, from high-end fashion pairings to high-profile relationships, meant she was primed to sell herself once more. “Gwyneth had spent her career manipulating her own coverage,” Odell explains, “and she applied the same savvy to Goop, beating her competitors at their own game.”
Beyond coffee enemas and bee-sting facials, there’s plenty of gossip elsewhere to gratify: her high school yearbook listed “obesity” as her greatest fear while Madonna proved too “toxic” a friend to keep around. Odell, meanwhile, fact-checks all health claims made by Goop with real medical experts (unsurprisingly, few pass).
What the biography reveals is a deeply image-conscious public figure, one often brandished as out of touch and elitist, mostly conforming to type. Odell confirms our suspicions that the elusive actress does seek out outrage to extend her reach – and pocket the windfalls.
In its detail and depth, Gwyneth illuminates the many real and unglamorous parts of one celebrity so beholden to selling purity and perfection.
The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.
Most Viewed in Culture
Loading
