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Gwyneth Kate Paltrow (born September 27,
1972) is an Academy Award-winning American actress and
singer. She lives in the United Kingdom with her
husband, Chris Martin, who is the lead singer of the UK
band, Coldplay, and her two children, Apple and Moses.
Early life: Paltrow was born to the late film and
television director Bruce Paltrow (who was Jewish) and
Blythe Danner (who was raised a Quaker and is of
Pennsylvania Dutch descent). Her paternal grandparents
were Gertrud Goldman and Aaron Paltrow, and her maternal
grandparents were Eunice Hogan and John Danner. Raised
in Santa Monica, she attended Crossroads School before
moving and attending Spence School, a private girls'
school in New York City.
Later she briefly studied art history at
the University of California, Santa Barbara, before
discontinuing her degree and committing herself to
acting. Paltrow has a younger brother, Jake Paltrow, and
is a cousin of actress Katherine Moennig. She is an
"adopted daughter" of Talavera de la Reina
(Spain), where she lived as an exchange student and
learned Spanish. Paltrow was childhood friends with
Saturday Night Live's Maya Rudolph. She stated this when
she hosted on November 10, 2001. The two sang
Flashdance...What a Feeling together during Paltrow's
monologue and showed a photo of them in their youth.
Paltrow is a descendent of a famous 17th century Polish
rabbi, David HaLevi Segal of Cracow, through the Russian
rabbinical family, Paltrowitch, which produced
thirty-three rabbis over several generations. The
actress has said she is very proud of being Jewish, and
has attributed her father's warmth to his Jewish
heritage:
"My father had that incredible Jewish warmth,
really bolstering us [his children] all the time. And
when you're nine years old and you're hearing that you
are the best person, it gets in there, and you think,
'OK, I'm not going to be afraid to try things, because
I'm always loved no matter what.' That kills me, when I
think about it. It totally breaks my heart, how lucky I
am." Paltrow attended Brown Ledge Summer Camp, an
all-girl's camp in Vermont.
Career: 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), and later the same year
she played a small role in family friendly Steven
Spielberg's Hook (1991). She later starred in Se7en
(1995). Her performance in Emma (1996) received much
praise, particularly in Europe and Asia.
Two years later, Paltrow starred in a film titled
Shakespeare in Love, an imagining of how William
Shakespeare might have written Romeo and Juliet. The
film received critical acclaim, earned more than $100
million in domestic box office receipts, 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 received
an Academy Award nomination and won the Oscar® for Best
Actress in a Leading Role.
Since then, she has had a relatively low-profile, yet
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. Towards the end of
the film, their characters resolve their differences and
perform a cover version of Smokey Robinson's Cruisin'.
The song, which surprised many of Paltrow's fans, was
well-received and was eventually released as a single,
getting heavy airplay from Top 40 and adult
contemporary-formatted radio stations.
In an interview with The Guardian on 27 January 2006,
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, whilst View From the Top and
Shallow Hal were in the latter.
Since winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for
Shakespeare in Love, Paltrow was nominated for a Golden
Globe for Best Actress in a Drama for her role in PROOF
opposite Anthony Hopkins and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Other work: In May of 2005, Paltrow became the
new face of Estée Lauder's Pleasures perfume. 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
allieviate problems caused by poverty in New York City,
New York.
Personal life: On turning thirty, she says
"I had the most incredible birthday weekend until
my dad died on me like four days later," said
Paltrow, who turned 30 on Sept. 28, 2002. "It's
been, in many ways, the worst year of my life and will
continue to be."
Paltrow had a much-publicized romance and engagement to
Brad Pitt. 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.
She has been linked romantically with Ben Affleck and
Luke Wilson. She also been romantically linked with
other actors and famous people viz: Chris Heinz
(2000-01), Robert Sean Leonard (2001),
On December 5, 2003, she married Chris Martin of the
British rock group Coldplay in a secret wedding ceremony
in Southern California. Paltrow gave birth to their
first child, Apple Blythe Alison Martin, five months
later, on May 14, 2004, in London. She explained the
unusual first name on Oprah, saying,
“ It sounded so sweet and it conjured such a lovely
picture for me – you know, apples are so sweet and
they're wholesome and it's biblical – and I just
thought it sounded so lovely and...clean! And I just
thought, "Perfect!"
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, Moses Bruce Anthony
Martin, was born on April 8, 2006, by caesarean section
in New York City's Mount Sinai Hospital. Her son's first
name can be explained by the song that her husband wrote
for her shortly before their secret wedding, called
"Moses." It includes the words "Like
Moses has the power of the sea, so you've got power over
me..." and is about the moment when Martin met
Paltrow.
In May of 2005, she publicly announced that she suffered
from depression after the death of her father Bruce
Paltrow. She practices yoga, 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." She admits a
fondness for wine, however.
Paltrow is a good friend of Christina Applegate and
Beyoncé, but she 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 also good friends with Madonna and
fashion designers Valentino and Stella McCartney. Steven
Spielberg is a close family friend. She was best friends
with Winona Ryder until her breakup with Brad Pitt.
On September 27th, 2006 (her 34th birthday) Gwyneth sang
a duet with rap legend Jay-Z during his history-making
concert at Royal Albert Hall. She sang the chorus for
Song Cry, from the rapper's classic Blueprint album. 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 of 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
magazine 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.
Stalker: Paltrow had a stalker in 1999 and 2000
named Dante Michael Siou, who allegedly sent five to ten
packages a week: everything from love notes, flowers and
candy to religious tracts, pornography, dozens of
letters a week, and over 1,200 emails.
He also made a threat of a sexual nature
and showed up repeatedly at her house, even after her
mother, Blythe Danner warned him not to return. He
persisted despite being warned by the FBI and was
sentenced to several years in a mental institution. The
decision has since been overturned after jurists said
that Siou’s request to be placed in conditional
release programme should have been considered. |
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