{"id":72108,"date":"2025-08-15T17:28:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T17:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/72108\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T17:28:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T17:28:07","slug":"how-did-gwyneth-paltrow-go-from-ingenue-to-jade-egg-pusher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/72108\/","title":{"rendered":"How did Gwyneth Paltrow go from ingenue to jade-egg pusher?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Gwyneth Paltrow played the title role in the 1996 film “Emma,” based on Jane Austen\u2019s novel.The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

After 30 years in the spotlight, Gwyneth Paltrow has lived through enough eras to rival Taylor Swift: From ingenue to It girl to fashion plate to Oscar winner, to entrepreneur to professional lightning rod and purveyor of junk science. These days the phrase \u201clove her or hate her\u201d is affixed to Paltrow like luxury cashmere, and it was this polarity that celebrity biographer Amy Odell set out to explore.<\/p>\n

Books we’re loving in August<\/a><\/p>\n

In Gwyneth: A Biography, Odell maps out her subject\u2019s formative years as the privileged daughter of Hollywood royalty and an occasional New York society mean girl, and connects those early days to Paltrow\u2019s more recent iterations as the CEO of Goop. The book, which Paltrow and her team declined to participate in, hit the bestseller list out of the gate. Odell spoke to The Globe about getting deep into the Goop<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The book begins on a topic that will be familiar to most Paltrow observers: the jade yoni eggs. Goop\u2019s recommendation that women should insert these crystals vaginally to promote hormonal balance and prevent uterine prolapse got the company sued by California\u2019s consumer protection office. Why was that the right starting point? <\/p>\n

When you first start writing a biography, you know you\u2019re telling someone\u2019s story, but you might not know the thesis or the take-away that you want a reader to have. In the epilogue I write that Gwyneth showed the world how much money people will spend and how much effort they will undergo to be well, no matter what science tells us. I think the jade egg was the biggest controversy that ever emerged about Goop, and it also shows the tension of the company and Gwyneth as its leader where she is selling things that she seems to believe in and then you have experts saying no, these things don\u2019t work, and may even be harmful. So what is it about Gwyneth\u2019s life that made her into someone who believes in these things, and why has she been so successful selling them? <\/p>\n

Before this book, you worked on a similarly thorough biography of Anna Wintour. With that project Wintour did not do an interview, but she did connect you with sources and participate in the fact-checking process. Were you initially hopeful that it would be the same with Gwyneth?<\/p>\n

You never know what the access is going to look like when the project starts. Anna made her sources \u2013 friends and colleagues \u2013 available to me and the whole process was just a lot more straightforward. With Gwyneth I really had to dig to find people who would speak with me. I went back and forth with her people over the three years that I worked on the book, asking repeatedly, does Gwyneth want to be interviewed? It was only as I was wrapping up that I finally got an official no from her representatives. <\/p>\n

As a biographer, are there pros to not having your subject participate? <\/p>\n

Gwyneth is someone who has been interviewed so many times for so many different profiles. We\u2019ve heard from her in the context of these very PR-managed stories and less from the people around her. I interviewed more than 220 sources, people who worked with Gwyneth at Goop, people who worked on her films, friends from over the years. All to find out what she\u2019s really like when the cameras are off. I was surprised to hear her described as cold and icy and aloof. I was surprised to learn about how her acting experience has helped her as the CEO of Goop. When she was meeting with VCs trying to raise money for Goop she was able to remember what to say and deliver it like recalling lines on a script. <\/p>\n

She is also a lot raunchier than I would have guessed. <\/p>\n

That was another surprise. Particularly having come up on her movies in the nineties: Emma, Great Expectations, Shakespeare in Love, A Perfect Murder. All of these elitist upper-crust ice princess roles that hewed closely to her life growing up on the Upper East Side. But her friends talked about her as someone who was so funny, a big curser, someone with a very bawdy sense of humour.<\/p>\n

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Gwyneth Paltrow wins the Oscar for Best Actress for her role in Shakespeare in Love in 1999.TIMOTHY A. CLARY\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

She talked about a favourite sex act with Ben Affleck that I can\u2019t name in a newspaper.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s someone who has talked openly about her sexuality, and monetized it. The vagina candle and the whole sexual wellness business that she brought to Goop. She wanted to take the stigma away from women\u2019s sexuality and, to be clear, I think that\u2019s a great thing. <\/p>\n

It seems like this sort of deeply researched portrait of a celebrity has become less common in an era where celebrities control their own images on social media, they get interviewed by their best friends, they produce their own Netflix docs. What is the value of critical analysis? <\/p>\n

I interviewed R.J. Cutler, who did the Martha Stewart documentary, as well as The September Issue, which is a doc about Vogue and Anna Wintour. He told me that when he worked on these projects he made it clear who had final cut. This book is me having final cut. I do think the changing media landscape \u2013 celebrities controlling what they share through social media and feeling like they have to engage less with the mainstream press \u2013 is a big backdrop to Gwyneth\u2019s story. She was doing endorsement deals with Est\u00e9e Lauder, American Express. This was the early 2000s when it was still considered kind of tawdry for actresses to do these endorsement deals. And then she was one of the first celebrities to say hey, why am I using my image to promote these other brands when I could promote my own brand? <\/p>\n

Of the 220 interviews, was there a subject you were particularly pleased to land? <\/p>\n

It was really fun to talk to John Madden, who directed Gwyneth in Shakespeare in Love. There is that whole famous rumour about Winona Ryder [Gwyneth allegedly stole the script, and ultimately the role, from her then-friend], but I talked to a lot of people at Miramax, none of whom recalled Ryder ever being a serious contender, and John Madden told me that he only wanted Gwyneth. <\/p>\n

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Gwyneth Paltrow and Winona Ryder were inseparable throughout the nineties. Their friendship is rumoured to have fallen apart in 1998 when Paltrow landed the lead in Shakespeare in Love.KMazur\/Supplied<\/p>\n

Your reporting on Paltrow\u2019s time at Spence, the upper-crust private school for New York society, felt like an origin story. Was it hard to get people from that period to talk? <\/p>\n

Definitely people in that world are very tight-lipped. Spence was Gwyneth\u2019s entr\u00e9e into New York society. One person called it the thoroughbred horse of girls\u2019 schools. Unlike the schools Gwyneth had attended in L.A., there weren\u2019t a lot of entertainment families at Spence, so she\u2019s in this environment with people who weren\u2019t necessarily impressed by the entertainment industry. Her Spence friends all went onto college. Gwyneth didn\u2019t get into Vassar, which, according to a source I spoke with, would have been an easy school to get into for a Spence grad. I was told that it bothered her that she never finished college. And even when she ascended to the heights of her industry, wins an Oscar, that didn\u2019t really register with the people she grew up with. <\/p>\n

Do you think that rejection pushed her away from traditional institutions?<\/p>\n

I did wonder if that experience was a driver for her as a business person and an entrepreneur. <\/p>\n

Is there a question about Paltrow that you hear most often? <\/p>\n

A lot of people asked me whether she believes in the things that she\u2019s selling, and I think she does. But there is a contradiction: Many people talked about how she picks things up really quickly, whether that\u2019s archery for her role in Emma or reading a spreadsheet at Goop. She is this smart person, so why does she believe these gurus like Anthony William, the Medical Medium?<\/p>\n

Any theories?<\/p>\n

I think that when you\u2019re a star \u2013 and she was the biggest movie star in the world at one point \u2013 people don\u2019t tell you no; obstacles are removed from your life. So if you find people who are offering magical thinking, people still aren\u2019t going to question you, and you think you\u2019re never wrong, so \u2026 <\/p>\n

You write about Paltrow\u2019s tendency to downplay her ambition. Given how unabashed she has been about other things \u2013 her distaste for Cheez Whiz or drunk women \u2013 why is that the thing she was disinclined to show in public?<\/p>\n

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Gwyneth Paltrow attends the ‘Swarovski-Masters of Light’ exhibition in Milan, Italy in June 2024.Luca Bruno\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

One explanation could be that the world has not always been kind to ambitious women, and certainly, she was subjected to some coverage that was sexist, particularly in the aughts when people decided they were getting tired of hearing how perfect she was after she won the Oscar. Going back, it was kind of crazy to see how quickly people turned on her. The internet was coming up so maybe there was a need for stories that people would click on. And then partly it was a reaction to her privilege, particularly when she wore the diamond choker to the Oscars and then talked about how her \u201cdaddy\u201d was going to buy it for her \u2013 that was something people really seized on. <\/p>\n

The headline of a 2018 New York Times profile read, \u201cHow Goop\u2019s Haters Made Gwyneth Paltrow\u2019s Company Worth $250 Million.\u201d Is leveraging hate something Gwyneth had done consciously, or was it more an obliviousness that worked in her favour? <\/p>\n

After Coldplay KissCam scandal, Astronomer hires Gwyneth Paltrow as \u2018very temporary\u2019 spokesperson<\/a><\/p>\n

I think a bit of both. At Goop, I know they would plant things \u2013 wellness products and stories \u2013 to try to get the internet audience going. A controversy like the jade egg would get a lot of traffic and then the people who went to the site might buy something. But the outrage wasn\u2019t something you could recreate, necessarily. They tried an energy clearing kit, and nobody seized on that, and then the jade egg \u2013 nobody saw that coming. <\/p>\n

You interviewed Jen Gunter, the Canadian gynecologist who has very publicly challenged Paltrow on many of Goop\u2019s most dubious health claims. Gunter draws a direct line from Goop to the modern Make America Healthy Movement. Do you agree? <\/p>\n

I asked all of the medical experts I spoke with if they saw a connection between Gwyneth and MAHM or the rise of RFK Jr., and for the most part, they did, I think because Goop has sown a distrust of science and Western medicine, and established research much in the way that Kennedy has. Dr. Gunter is one of the only critics who seemed to really bother Gwyneth. After Gunter criticized the jade eggs, Gwyneth rallied this whole team together to produce this response, a letter that she shared on social media that started, \u201cwhen they go low, we go high.\u201d My sources told me that they told Gwyneth not to respond because it would only draw attention, and Dr. Gunter has talked about how she was just a chick with a WordPress trying to get accurate information to her patients. <\/p>\n

She said something that really crystallized a lot about Gwyneth and her story to me, which I included in the epilogue, which was, \u201cImagine if Gwyneth had been out there talking about abortion access.\u201d She said it\u2019s interesting how people use their privilege, and I think that\u2019s a really good point. Gwyneth is impactful, and she was early to wellness, giving it a rhetoric and a language and this gorgeous, aspirational aesthetic. I think it\u2019s fair to say she is responsible for creating an archetype of what a wellness company can be, and we\u2019ve seen it copied countless times all these years later. <\/p>\n

Dr. Jen Gunter says it\u2019s time to go public with the truth about women\u2019s privates<\/a><\/p>\n

The vagina lies: Debunking myths, half-truths and misinformation about women\u2019s bodies<\/a><\/p>\n

That\u2019s not a good thing, is it? <\/p>\n

If you look at where we are today, at least in the U.S., I don\u2019t think a distrust in science is helping us. And if you look at the evaluations, The Global Wellness Institute puts the wellness industry at US$6.3-trillion, whereas Pharma is between US$1.6-trillion and US$1.7-trillion. So wellness is bigger than Big Pharma. It\u2019s Big Wellness. <\/p>\n

Maybe Paltrow should have stuck to her banana nut muffins.<\/p>\n

The recipes on Goop are really good. <\/p>\n

I love Goop\u2019s black pepper chicken.<\/p>\n

She has a turkey burger recipe that is on regular rotation in my house. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Gwyneth Paltrow played the title role in the 1996 film “Emma,” based on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,75,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-72108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-entertainment","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}