Gwyneth Paltrow

• Born: September 27, 1972
• Place of Birth: Los Angeles, California

Although her first film role was not until 1991, by the end of the decade Paltrow had won an Academy Award for Best Actress, cementing her reputation as one of the most talented young actors of her generation. She continued earning roles in a variety of films in the first decades of the twenty-first century.

Gwyneth Paltrow assumed from a young age that she would be an actor, playing several small roles as a child at the Williamstown Theatre Festival alongside her parents, director Bruce Paltrow and actor Blythe Danner. In 1991, Paltrow enrolled at the University of California at Santa Barbara, but her performance in the play Picnic convinced her parents that she should pursue acting full time. That same year, she landed a small role as the young Wendy in Steven Spielberg’s Hook, followed by parts in Malice (1993) and Flesh and Bone (1993).

Although Paltrow was given increasingly larger parts in several films during the mid-1990s, including Seven (1995) with Brad Pitt, her talent was not widely recognized until she won the coveted title role in Emma (1996), a remake of the classic Jane Austen novel. Paltrow’s performance as the incurable matchmaker was praised for her comedic timing and authentic British accent, and she followed that film’s success with no fewer than five movies released in 1998: Sliding Doors, Great Expectations, Hush, A Perfect Murder, and Shakespeare in Love.

In Shakespeare in Love, perhaps best described as period romantic comedy, Paltrow portrayed Viola de Lesseps, a fictional noblewoman whose star-crossed romance with William Shakespeare inspires him to write the play Romeo and Juliet (pr. c. 1595–96). Shakespeare in Love won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Paltrow’s luminous performance earned her both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe. In the summer of 1999, she returned triumphantly to the Williamstown Theatre Festival, where she earned rave reviews as Rosalind in Shakespeare’s As You Like It (pr. c. 1599–1600).

Having won an Academy Award at such a young age, Paltrow felt free to pursue projects that interested her without concern about commercial success. At the same time, she had already begun to slow the frantic pace of her career, due in part to her highly publicized broken engagement with Brad Pitt in 1997 as well as to her father’s cancer diagnosis. Paltrow rounded out the decade with The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and also began filming a long-delayed project directed by her father titled Duets, which was ultimately released in 2000. Although the film flopped commercially, Paltrow was widely praised for her vocal talents. In addition, although she found the experience emotionally difficult in light of her father’s continuing health issues, she relished the opportunity to work with him before his death in 2002.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, Paltrow starred alongside Jack Black in the comedy Shallow Hal (2001) before taking on roles in films such as Possession (2002), a romantic drama; Sylvia (2003), a biographical drama about real-life writer Sylvia Plath; and Running with Scissors (2006), an adaptation of the 2002 memoir by Augusten Burroughs. In 2008, she made her first appearance as Pepper Potts in the film that largely served as the foundation for the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe series of films, Iron Man. That same year, she began what would become a profitable lifestyle company and brand, Goop, as a newsletter. In addition to then reprising her role as Potts for Iron Man 2 in 2010, The Avengers in 2011, and Iron Man 3 in 2013, she went on to appear in Contagion (2011), Thanks for Sharing (2012), and Mortdecai (2015). Between 2017 and 2019, she returned to her role as Potts for the Marvel installments Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), and Avengers: Endgame (2019). Having also appeared on television occasionally, in 2019 she returned to the medium to appear alongside Ben Platt in the new Netflix series The Politician, for which she also served as an executive producer. The show's second season premiered in 2020.

In 2021, she produced and starred in the Netflix show Sex, Love, and Goop, a sex-themed therapy session. In 2024, the show was renewed for a second season.

In 2023 a jury found Paltrow not at fault for a 2016 skiing incident after the actor was sued by a retired optometrist who alleged that Paltrow's reckless skiing led to a crash in which he sustained a traumatic brain injury. The jury also found the plaintiff, who was countersued by Paltrow for both legal fees and $1 in damages, at fault for the incident.

Impact

Gwyneth Paltrow’s career experienced an almost meteoritic rise during the 1990s, from her first small movie roles in 1991 to an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1999 at the age of twenty-six. Her consistently strong performances earned both critical and popular acclaim, and in 2000 she was named one of Premiere magazine’s “Power Elite” on the strength of her work in the 1990s. She maintained an influential presence into the first decades of the twenty-first century in the industry as an actor as well as outside of the industry through her lifestyle brand.

Bibliography

Duboff, Josh. "Gwyneth Paltrow Gets Real about Past Relationships, Her Place in the #MeToo Movement, and Why She Quit Acting for Good." Harper's Bazaar, 7 Jan. 2020, www.harpersbazaar.com/celebrity/latest/a30277718/gwyneth-paltrow-interview-2020/. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Hill, Anne E. Gwyneth Paltrow. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2002.

Milano, Valerie. Gwyneth Paltrow. Toronto: ECW Press, 2000.

Schmidt, Ingrid. "Gwyneth Paltrow Says Prospect of Being an Empty Nester Is “Kind of Giving Me a Nervous Breakdown.” The Hollywood Reporter, 24 Apr. 2024, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/style/gwyneth-paltrow-goop-health-wellness-summit-quotes-best-advice-2024-1235880253/ . Accessed 22 May 2024.

Valdez, Jonah. "Gwyneth Paltrow Wins Ski-Crash Trial as Jury Puts '100%' of Fault on Plaintiff." Los Angeles Times, 30 Mar. 2023, www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2023-03-30/gwyneth-paltrow-trial-verdict-ski-crash. Accessed 22 May 2024.