Gwyneth Kate Paltrow (born
September 27, 1972) is an American
actress.
The daughter of
Bruce Paltrow and
Blythe Danner, Paltrow dropped out of
her university to follow an acting career. She began her career in
theatre in 1990, and made her film debut the following year. Her
early films include such successes as
Se7en (1995),
Emma (1996), in which she played the
title role, and
Sliding Doors
(1998). Her performance in
Shakespeare in Love (1998) brought
her widespread recognition; she won the
Academy Award for Best
Actress, a
Golden Globe Award and two
Screen Actors Guild Awards, for
Outstanding Lead Actress and as a member of the
Outstanding Cast, among other awards and nominations.
She followed this success with roles in such films as
The Talented Mr. Ripley
(1999) and
Shallow Hal (2001).
She also starred in the film
Duets
(2000), produced and directed by her father, Bruce Paltrow, and
sang on two singles released from the film's soundtrack, which were
hits in some countries. She received a nomination for a
Golden
Globe Award for Best Actress in Motion Picture Drama for
Proof (2005). More
recently she appeared in the box-office success
Iron Man (2008).
Her personal life has often been scrutinized in the media; she
dated
Brad Pitt from 1995 until 1997, and
married
Chris Martin, the lead singer
of British rock band
Coldplay, in 2003.
They are the parents of two children. Paltrow has commented that
she curtailed her work commitments following the birth of her first
child.
Early life
Paltrow
was born in Los
Angeles
, California
, the daughter of Blythe
Danner, an actress, and Bruce
Paltrow, a film and television
director, writer, and producer. Paltrow's father was of
Ashkenazi Russian
Jewish descent and her mother is a
Quaker
of
Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry.
Paltrow
was raised in Santa Monica
, she attended Crossroads School before
moving and attending The Spence
School, a private girls' school in New York City.
Later she
briefly studied art history at the
University of California, Santa
Barbara
, before dropping out to pursue a career in
acting. Paltrow has a younger brother,
Jake Paltrow, and is a cousin of actress
Katherine Moennig and
Congresswoman
Gabrielle Giffords
(AZ-08).
She is an "adopted daughter" of Talavera de la
Reina
(Spain
), where at
age 15 she spent a year as an exchange student and learned
Spanish. Paltrow was
childhood friends with
Saturday
Night Live's
Maya
Rudolph.
Career
Early years (1990–1994)
Paltrow made her professional stage debut in 1990.
Her most recent stage
appearance was in Proof at
London's Donmar
Warehouse
. Her
debut film was
Shout (1991).
She also appeared in
Hook
(1991),
Malice (1993), and
Flesh and Bone (1993).
Breakthrough (1995–2000)
Paltrow starred in
Se7en
(1995), opposite
Brad Pitt and
Morgan Freeman. The film was successful
commercially and critically. Then in 1996 she starred in
Emma, where she received
strongly positive critical acclaim, particularly in the UK for her
impressive English accent, as well as in Europe and Asia.
Two years later, Paltrow starred in
Shakespeare in Love, in which she
portrayed the fictional love interest of
William Shakespeare, portrayed by
Joseph Fiennes. It earned more than
US$100 million in
box office receipts in
the USA, and received numerous awards.
Shakespeare in Love
won the
Golden Globes for Best
Motion Picture-Musical or Comedy and Best Screenplay, as well as
the Academy Award for
Best Picture. Paltrow also
won the award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a
Leading Role from the
Screen Actors
Guild. Later that year, Paltrow won the
Academy Award for Best
Actress. The next year Paltrow starred in other movie roles
such as
A Perfect Murder.
In 1999 Paltrow starred in
The Talented Mr. Ripley
which earned over $80 million domestically, and received positive
reviews.
Recent years
Until recently, despite a relatively low profile, she has
maintained a steady film career with a few critically acclaimed
film roles, including
Proof (2005) and
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001).
Audiences got their first taste of Paltrow's singing ability with
the 2000 release of
Duets, in which
she co-starred with singer
Huey Lewis,
who played her karaoke-hustling estranged father, and was directed
by her father,
Bruce Paltrow. Towards
the end of the film, their characters resolve their differences and
perform a
cover version of
Smokey Robinson's "
Cruisin'". The song was well-received and
was eventually released as a single, getting heavy airplay from Top
40 and adult contemporary-formatted radio stations. The song went
to number one in
Australia while Paltrow's
rendition of the
Kim Carnes classic
"
Bette Davis Eyes" reached number
three.
In an interview with
The
Guardian, Paltrow admitted that she divided her career
into those movies she did for love and those films she did for
money:
The Royal Tenenbaums,
Proof, and
Sylvia fell into the former category, while
View from the Top and
Shallow Hal were in the latter.
Since winning the Oscar for
Shakespeare in Love, Paltrow's
film success has been less noteworthy. She said she was unequipped
to cope with the pressure, leading her to make several bad movie
choices, agreeing with peers who believe the win is a curse. She
has also made several cameo roles, such as her appearance in the
Brittany Murphy film
Love and Other Disasters, and
several smaller roles, such as her role in
Running With Scissors and
Infamous, in which she sang
Cole Porter's "
What Is This Thing Called
Love?".
She appeared in the 2005 film
Proof, based on the play of the same
name, in which she plays a young protagonist, mathematician and
daughter Catherine.
In 2008, she appeared in
Iron
Man as
Pepper Potts, her first
blockbuster film in several years. Paltrow told an interviewer that
initially she was hesitant to appear in a big blockbuster film, but
that she was won over by Robert Downey Jr., the star of the film,
and director Jon Favreau. Paltrow recalled a conversation with
Downey Jr., saying:
Other work
In May
2005, Paltrow became the new face of Estée
Lauder's
Pleasures perfume. She appeared in Chicago
on August 17, 2007, to sign bottles of the perfume, and on July 8,
2008, she promoted Lauder's Sensuous perfume in New York along with
the company's three other spokesmodels. Estée Lauder donates a
minimum of $500,000 of sales of items from the 'Pleasures Gwyneth
Paltrow' collection to
breast cancer
research.
Paltrow serves on the board of the
Robin Hood Foundation, a charitable
organization which attempts to alleviate problems caused by
poverty in New York City.
In 2006 she became the
new face for Bean Pole
International, a Korean
fashion
brand. She starred along with actor
Daniel Henney in several commercial films.
In October
2007, Paltrow signed up for a PBS television series Spain... on the road Again
with Mario Batali that showcases the
food and culture of
Spain.
In September 2008, she launched a weekly online upscale lifestyle
newsletter, Goop, encouraging readers to 'nourish the inner
aspect'. The
website's title is derived from
the initials of her first and last names. Each week, the newsletter
focuses on an action: Make, Go, Get, Do, Be, and See. It has been
ridiculed by a number of news outlets, including E-Online, Vanity
Fair, The Independent, and the UK's Daily Mirror.
In February 2009, Paltrow received a Grammy nomination for her
reading of the classic bear books of author
Bill Martin, Jr.
Paltrow is a
Save the Children
Artist Ambassador. She has been quoted saying:
World Pneumonia Day is November
2.
Personal life
Paltrow had a much-publicized romance and
engagement to
Brad Pitt
whom she dated from 1994 to 1997. She once stated that she
regretted breaking up with Pitt, saying in an interview with
Diane Sawyer that she wished Pitt well
and could not believe he was with her when she was "such a mess".
They were together for over three years.
On turning 30, she said "I had the most incredible birthday weekend
until my dad died on me like six days later," said Paltrow, who
turned 30 on September 27, 2002. "It's been, in many ways, the
worst year of my life and will continue to be."
On
December 5, 2003, she married Chris
Martin of the British
rock group Coldplay in a
secret wedding ceremony in Southern
California at a hotel; she had met him backstage at a
concert. On May 14, 2004, the couple had their first child,
a baby girl named Apple Blythe Alison Martin. One of Martin's band
associates already had a daughter named Apple, and the couple asked
their friend if they could 'borrow' the same name for their
daughter. Paltrow further explained the unusual
first name on
Oprah, saying:
The child's godfather is
Simon Pegg.
She
currently divides her residence between New York and Belsize Park
in London where they live in a house bought from
Kate Winslet.
In January 2006, Paltrow announced that, "Since my daughter came
along, I've not worked much through choice. And with another baby
on its way, I don't think I will be doing a lot for the next year
or so either." Her second child, a boy named Moses Bruce Anthony
Martin, was born on April 8, 2006, in New York City's
Mount Sinai Hospital. Her
son's first name was explained as the song that her husband wrote
for her shortly before their secret wedding, called "Moses".
In May 2005, she publicly announced that she had suffered from
depression after the death of
her father and the birth of her first child. She practices
yoga daily, and follows a
macrobiotic diet, although she told
People in 2005 that, "I'm
not as stringent as I was in the past. Now I'll have
cheese once in a while or white
flour, but I still believe in
whole grains and no
sugar."
Paltrow earned the enmity of
Sharon
Stone due to her performance as Stone in a
Saturday Night Live skit that poked
fun at Stone and her then-husband,
Phil
Bronstein.Paltrow is good friends with
Madonna, with whom she shares a
personal trainer, and
fashion designer Valentino. She was best friends with
Winona Ryder until Paltrow's breakup
with
Ben Affleck. Their friendship
reportedly ended because Winona accused Gwyneth of stealing the
female lead role in
Shakespeare in
Love from her.
On
September 27, 2006, Paltrow sang a duet with rap artist Jay-Z during
his concert at Royal
Albert Hall
. She sang the chorus for "
Song Cry", from the rapper's album
Blueprint. In an interview prior to her
appearance she indicated she would be attending the concert, but
did not mention she would perform. She was also quoted as saying
"I'm a Jay-Z fan. He's my best friend." Her husband,
Chris Martin, later performed the song
"
Beach Chair" with Jay-Z from the
rapper's album
Kingdom
Come.
In
December 2006, Paltrow was reported on the Internet to have told
Notícias Sábado, the weekend magazine supplement of
Portuguese
newspaper Diário de Notícias, that
she thought British people were more civilized and intelligent than
Americans. Paltrow denied making the statements attributed
to her and told
People
that she never gave an interview to a Portuguese publication, but
did a press conference in Spain where she tried to say in
Spanish that Europe was an "older culture"
and Americans "live to work".
Diário de Notícias later
clarified in their December 6, 2006, edition that they had not
obtained the quotes from an original interview or foreign press
conference, but rather from previous
English-language articles which are still
referenced online. In a 2007 interview with
W, Paltrow again claimed she was misquoted
by
Diário de Notícias, telling an interviewer:
In the May 2008 issue of
Vogue, Paltrow revealed that she
suffered from
post-partum
depression after giving birth to her second child, Moses. She
stated that she felt "out of her body", "disconnected, "down" and
"pessimistic”.
In a 2007 interview, Paltrow explained that she wasn't sure if she
wanted more children. "My husband really wants to adopt," she told
the interviewer, "So I don't know; I'm sort of open for
anything."
She has been criticized by some scientists after stating her belief
that using shampoo causes cancer. She said, "I fear that shampoo
gives cancer to children." Professor
Hugh Pennington responded by saying that
shampoo is completely safe unless you drink it: "It’s a load of
nonsense. Shampoo is perfectly safe, unless you drink it in large
quantities."
Filmography
References
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