The rocky evolution of actor, philanthropist and Goop guru Gwyneth Paltrow – iNews

CultureTVFrom her first major role as Young Wendy in Hook to the launch of Goop in 2008, Hollywood's controversial star is returning to acting

Friday, 27th September 2019, 17:14 pm

Earlier this week, Gwyneth Paltrow shuffled out onto the stage at the Emmys to present an award. She looked very pleased with herself, making the biggest of productions in crossing from one side of the stage to the other in tiny little steps. She was instantly transformed into a meme.

Paltrow is easily one of the most memeable celebrities. Over the past few years, she's become the punchline to many jokes; the super-privileged wellness guru telling women to shove 55 jade eggs up their vaginas, spraying psychic vampire repellent to get rid of bad vibes and rebranding divorce as the fluffy conscious uncoupling. Relatable? Absolutely not.

It's easy to forget that it was once Paltrow who was at the receiving end of the awards, an Oscar-winning actor who was adored by the critics and public, a highly accomplished talent who led some of the biggest films of the 90s and 00s.

Her metamorphosis into a beatific self-help deity meant acting has fallen by the wayside to her other $165m empire. But this week sees an about turn from Paltrow as she takes on one of her meatiest and funniest roles of recent times.

With tongue firmly in her cheek, she stars as Georgina Hobart in Ryan Murphys The Politician, the millionaire art-collecting adoptive mother to the hyper-ambitious high-schooler, Payton. Doing the gardening in designer ball gowns and painting pictures for charity of a Syrian child killed in an airstrike, she seems to be sending up the image that most people have of who we think she is.

Is she beyond satire, now? Or is it simply a masterstroke to prove that shes in on the joke? For all the criticism fired at Paltrow - in 2013 she was branded Star magazines "most irritating celebrity" - it appears that shes come to the point of acceptance and now is taking back ownership of her image.

Shes recently been credited with kick-starting the takedown of the disgraced film producer, Harvey Weinstein. In The New York Times Jodi Kantor and Megan Twoheys book, She Said, they revealed that Paltrow had hosted the evening in which actors like Ashley Judd opened up about the abuse they had received at the hands of Weinstein and that she also facilitated other actresses coming forward with their experiences, all of which he denies.

Whether she can transition from glowing earth-mother to self-deprecating star of the screen again is still to be seen. However, her past history shows shes always embraced change, evolving time and time again over the years. With a bit of cosmic ordering, its surely written in the stars.

The evolution of Gwyneth Paltrow

The teen screen princess

The year is 1991, and how ever will 19-year-old Paltrow, daughter of director Bruce Paltrow and Tony-award winning dancer Blythe Danner, catch a break in the film industry? Remarkably, she struggles against the odds and gets cast as young Wendy in Hook.

The serious actress

Her big break came four years later in 1995, when she played Tracy in Seven, alongside Brad Pitt, Kevin Spacey and Morgan Freeman. The fact that her head ended up memorably in a box at the end of the film bore no relation to her captivating screen presence, something that Pitt also picked up on, and the pair later started dating (and morphing into each other).

The rom-com every woman

From 1995, Paltrow was hot property, and dipped her toes into the rom-com world, starring with Friends David Schwimmer in the entirely unremarkable funeral-themed The Pallbearer (actual tagline: Something magical is about to unfold in the most unexpected place!). Then there was the genre-defining Sliding Doors - Paltrow played the hard-done-by British PR girl Helen - in which a generation pondered what they would do if they missed their tube and came home to find John Lynch shagging in their bed.

The period romance star

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? Thatll be Paltrow, going full period drama in productions like 1996s Emma, an adaptation of the Jane Austen novel in which she played the titular role, or the modern adaptation of Dickens' Great Expectations, where she played Estella, who had a penchant for stripping off in New York warehouse apartments. Still, all the literary greats were a great background for her next role...

The Oscar-winning starlet

1998s Shakespeare in Love: everybody in the world watched, then promptly wondered why we werent being taught about his muse, Viola De Lessops in GCSE English Lit. Damn patriarchy in action, yet again. There was no doubt this was Paltrows finest hour, and she eventually bagged the Academy Award. Her incredibly emotional Oscars speech was widely mocked, but let the woman have a moment - she was just crowned the best actress in the entire world (in 1999).

The indie kid

Fact: it took exactly 18 years for Phoebe Waller-Bridge smoking a cigarette with a cocktail in Chateau Marmont to oust Paltrow as Margot Tenenbaum lighting up a cig in a fur coat as the coolest woman of all time. Paltrow got serious hipster kudos as she appeared in Wes Andersons The Royal Tenenbaums in 2001, playing the aloof playwright with a bob, and who later spawned a million lazy fancy dress outfits.

The wholesome chef

The year is 2007, and Paltrow is now a TV chef, sitting somewhere between Mary Berry and Martha Steward on the cooking chart. The same year, the Los Angeles born-and-bred star launched her first cookbook, Spain... A Culinary Road Trip with the now disgraced chef Mario Batali. If anyone doubted her Spanish credentials, know this: she once went on a school exchange there aged 15, so please pass the cho-ri-tho and sit back down.

The self-help guru

In 2008, Paltrow pivoted to wellness and launched her weekly lifestyle letter, Goop, which then became a website, an e-commerce site and basically a bible for rich American women to make lifestyle choices by. She says it was set up to "nourish the inner aspect", presumably of her wallet, as it pulled in an estimated $60m in 2017.

Of course, Goop has not been without its many controversies - namely, advising people to steam their vaginas (do not do this, countered pretty much every actual medical GP across the world), to use a coffee enema (same) and that they should be wearing NASA-made body stickers to rebalance energy frequencies (to paraphrase NASA: nah). Still, who needs experts anyway? Tickets for her Goop festival, In Goop Health, move quicker than the Glastonbury resale, so while shes got a quick minute in between sex dust smoothies,why not pick up acting again in a newly iconic TV show? Good on you Gwynnie.

The Politician is on Netflix from Friday 27 September.

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The rocky evolution of actor, philanthropist and Goop guru Gwyneth Paltrow - iNews