Picture Perfect. Review of Amy Odell’s Biography Gwyneth. By Dish Stanley

Yes, life was greased for Gwyneth as the privileged child of Blythe Danner and Bruce Paltrow and goddaughter of Steven Spielberg, but whether you want to acknowledge it or not, Odell tells us that Gwyneth is also inarguably smart, talented, hard-working, determined and seemingly invincible.

Amy Odell’s Gwyneth biography is painstakingly researched — she clearly digs into the archives, the interviews and the cultural detritus of the last three decades — and the result is informative as well as eye-opening. The Gwyneth that Odell ultimately portrays merits respect for her work ethic, her talents, her vision and her apparent unflappability in the face of so many haters. Her invincibility in weathering each storm, turning them into an advantage, even. But she doesn’t spare Gwyneth when it comes to her shortcomings, as a person and as GOOP’s founder and CEO.

Odell reminds us that before she became polarizing for selling us $200 “essential” white T-shirts, Gwyneth was a genuinely talented actress who impressed her peers as well as us, her audience, for her hard work as well as the subtlety of her performances. Not only did she nail the character of Marge as Dickey’s sweet but suspicious girlfriend in The Talented Mr. Ripley (one of my favorite films), but she was pitch perfect as an anxious but stoic playwright in The Royal Tenenbaums and a surprise and dellight as both the vain and misguided star of Emma and the romantic, cross-dressing dreamer in Shakespeare In Love. If it were up to me, Gwyneth would still be starring in smart, independent films the likes of which Miramax once made (and A24 is now making) as her primary gig.

In connection with her acting career, though, what was perhaps her most critical “role” was assisting Jodi Kantor in her watershed reporting in The New York Times about Harvey Weinstein’s predatory sex abuse. Gwyneth shared the story of her own experiences with Weinstein which occurred during the filming of Emma, when many other actresses, Kantor reported, were reluctant to for fear of his powerful retribution. I had always wondered why Gwyneth didn’t come out much earlier against Weinstein given her own power and the power of her support base (her father, mother, Steven Spielberg (her godfather)) and given how well she seemed to be able to manage her relationship with Weinstein. There were obvious advantages to Gwyneth from her longstanding good relationship with Weinstein that must have been a factor. Because it is an unauthorized biography it can’t possibly include all the facts and dynamics around her decision, but I’m grateful that she was instrumental in making Kantor’s revelations possible.

She considers herself retired from full-time acting (though she will consider selective roles and has a A24 film coming out with Timothee Chalamet called Marty Supreme). Odell’s biography makes it clear that not only did Gwyneth burn out on the fame, the lack of control over her life (and schedule) that being an actress demanded, Gwyneth’s pivot to Goop was aligned with her genuine passion for wellness. Gwyneth not only saw the wellness market coming long before most of us knew what ashwagandha was, but it also aligns with her personal interest in home, travel and wellness. She may be making a lot of money from it, but she is clearly genuinely obsessed with various aspects of it, particularly what she would refer to as ‘emerging modalities” in wellness. She built an empire that, love it or hate it, reshaped how women talk about health, beauty, and aspiration.

I remember when a GOOP pop-up store opened up near me in the summer of 2019. A close girlfriend, Nina, suggested we build a summer Friday afternoon around it: shop a bit then grab lunch. It might be hard to remember now because the clean, beautiful upscale wellness branding is ubiquitous now but it was new and refreshing when Gwyneth launched it. It was there that I first discovered cosmetic lines I still swear by, like Westman Atelier. Nina urged me to buy a navy G Label dress with minimal, simple, classic lines that I just wore yesterday. I even picked up a clean lubricant and fancy sex toy (which is a subject we cover a lot here in The CRUSH Letter, as you can read about here). We loved the products and the experience and it was clear to us then that Gwyneth had caught the zeitgeist with her combination of great taste and passion for wellness. (Not to mention her sense of humor. Years later Nina sent me a box in the mail that I opened to find Gwyneth’s famous candle “This candle smells like my vagina.”)

The full picture on GOOP though, as covered in detail by Odell, gets pretty murky. The image she paints of Gwyneth is less benevolent wellness goddess and more relentless CEO, steering a brand that has far too often drifted into pseudoscience, questionable claims and fraud, even after being called out repeatedly on the lack of fact-checking by scientists and doctors with expertise in women’s health. GOOP was sued by the nonprofit group Truth in Advertising as well as the California Food, Drug and Medical Device Task Force for its false claims. Remember GOOP’s jade eggs for the vagina to improve sex? The ‘Body Vibes,’ a pack of 24 stickers GOOP claimed were made with the same “conductive carbon material NASA uses to line space suits so they can monitor an astronaut’s vitals? That was all wholly made up marketing bullshit. And then there was the “V Steam” that Gwyneth personally recommended, a vaginal steaming procedure that obgyn’s strongly discouraged because of high risk of a range of infections. And I can’t forget that she encouraged us to drink gallons of raw goat milk, for god’s sake, in part because a family member started drinking it. (Gross.)

Far less significant than the health and wellness distortions she perpetuates, the biography includes a lot of savory details about Gwyneth’s personally unflattering traits, which Odell seems to dish with relish. (Or was it me relishing reading it? I’m not above a little envy.) She is portrayed as icy, aloof, and occasionally breathtakingly out of touch with real life. Odell doesn’t shy away from the diva tendencies, the prickliness with peers or the entitlement and well-documented privilege that makes Gwyneth simultaneously enviable and insufferable. 

There’s one eye-opening gesture that Odell reports about Gwyneth that I found particularly petty and loathsome: she likes to mime a ‘throwing up’ gesture behind the backs of people she dislikes. One instance was when Gwyneth was still an actress dating Ben Affleck while Matt Damon was dating Minnie Driver. Gwyneth reportedly mimicked putting her finger down her throat when Driver turned around; this was in front of a crowd and at a party Gwyneth had thrown for Driver. Perhaps forgivable if it were one-off especially since she was still in her twenties, but given that Gwyneth was the far bigger star it has mean girl bully vibes reminiscent of some of her high school days as an ‘it’ girl. And it continued. She reportedly did it many years later, at GOOP‘s offices, when she was its CEO. Odell writes that Paltrow brought Andres Sosa, GOOP’s Chief Marketing Officer, over from The Outnet/Net-a-Porter, but “quickly became dissatisfied with his performance,” and “before long she was rolling her eyes and making her classic vomit face behind his back.”  Another attempt to publicly humiliate somebody once they’d turned around, and this time in a business setting to a respected executive who was her subordinate. This one life long gesture of hers crystallizes for me her worst traits: the brattiness, the superiority, the lack of empathy, the certainty that she will get away with it, that she will not be called out for humiliating somebody else. The chilling bully vibes.

In the end, Gwyneth leaves us torn, which may be the point. Odell’s biography acknowledges that Paltrow is both a gifted actress and a determined, hard-working visionary entrepreneur, but also a woman who can’t seem to stop tripping over her entitlement and sense of her own hauteur. A woman who is less kind than she pretends to be and more ruthless than she looks. For those of us in midlife who have lived through the rise of Gwyneth from actress to GOOP purveyor, the book is a reminder that even the woman selling perfection is, in the end, just another flawed mortal, albeit one with an enviable wardrobe and really good lighting.

Amy Odell writes BackRow on substack, a newsletter about fashion and culture that I have subscribed to since its launch (and that I open as soon as it lands). Her previous book was a biography on Anna Wintour.

Let’s say you want to hear more on Gwyneth from Amy Odell, the smartest one of the many podcasts covering the book is Culture Study’s One Gwyneth Podcast to Rule Them All hosted by Anne Helen Peterson.

Or let’s say you want to witness Gwyneth’s charm in action as she mesmerizes three famous men at once. Then listen to this episode of Smartless from May 2021. Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett (who know very little about GOOP going into the episode) are putty in Gwyneth’s hands. At the end of the episode Will Arnett admits to his crush on her, while Sean Hayes admires her “little black top” and Jason her radiant skin.

Some CRUSH Stories You May Have Missed:

The Crush Letter
The Crush Letter is a weekly newsletter from Dish Stanley on everything life, love & culture. It's a view through the eyes of somebody over 50 who has found that midlife is a lot cooler than they said it would be. If you’d like to take a look at some of our best stories go to Read Us. Want the Dish?