“Reserved for G-Spot,” reads the sign on Goop CEO Gwyneth Paltrow’s company parking space, according to Amy Odell’s reporting in her new biography of the chameleonic celebrity, Gwyneth (Gallery Books). G-Spot, Oscar winner, golden girl, domestic goddess, wellness entrepreneur, conscious uncoupler and, as Odell writes, “one of the most resented celebrities in the world.”
“Love her or hate her,” Odell tells VF, “she has been a cultural influencer for 30 years.”
In the book, for which Odell interviewed more than 220 people—Paltrow, notably, not among them—the portrait Odell paints is complex. She writes seriously about Paltrow’s work ethic and talents as an actor, gives ample space to the nuances of the alleged abuse Paltrow suffered at the hands of Harvey Weinstein, who she said propositioned her for a massage during the time she was preparing to shoot the Miramax film Emma (Weinstein has denied her version of events, and his representative didn’t respond to VF’s request for comment), and traces the trajectory from her devastation in the wake of her father’s death (of complications of oral cancer and pneumonia, in Rome, during a trip celebrating his daughter’s 30th birthday) to her interest in alternative wellness solutions.
The author runs through the actor’s biological and proximal bona fides: child of the actor Blythe Danner and the producer Bruce Paltrow, goddaughter to Steven Spielberg. In high school, at the request of her father, Madonna wrote her a note discouraging her from smoking (“P.S.: Good girls live longer.” A representative for Madonna didn’t respond to VF’s request for comment). When she was getting rejected from colleges, her parents reportedly asked Michael Douglas to put in a good word at his alma mater, UC Santa Barbara, the school she ultimately attended. (Douglas confirmed to VF that he tried to help Paltrow get into UCSB. “I had produced a couple of projects with her father, Bruce, and acted early in my career with her mother, Blythe,” he wrote via a representative. “I was a theatre graduate from UCSB and spent some of the best years of my life in Santa Barbara.”) Not to mention her roll call of exes: fiancé Brad Pitt, boyfriend Ben Affleck, and husband Chris Martin.
She also presents the quotes that have gotten Paltrow pilloried in the press: “I can’t pretend to be somebody who makes $25,000 a year,” and “I would rather smoke crack than eat cheese from a can,” and “To have a regular job and be a mom…of course there are challenges, but it’s not like being on set.” Odell writes that on Paltrow’s Spence graduation page, the yearbook editors listed her “nightmare” as “obesity”—a foreshadow of her Shallow Hal controversy to come.
At its crux, “I wanted to know if Gwyneth really believed in the things that she was publishing and selling,” Odell says. Read on to find out.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Vanity Fair: Why Gwyneth?
Amy Odell: Love her or hate her, she has been a cultural influencer for 30 years. Countless glossy magazine profiles have been written about her. I worked on this book for three years, I conducted really rigorous research, I interviewed more than 220 people, and I learned that those profiles only scratched the surface of who she really is.
Your interactions with Goop PR were hot and cold. Do you know if she’s read the book?
I have no idea. You would have to ask her. [Ed. note: A representative for Paltrow didn’t respond to VF‘s request for comment.]
Have you heard from her or her people?
No. I was in touch with her team over the course of the three-year process, pretty much most of that time. “Does Gwyneth want to talk to me? Does Gwyneth want to talk to me?” Right around the time I finished, I got a no.
