Gwyneth Paltrow

Gwyneth Paltrow
File:Gwyneth.jpg Paltrow at press conference for the BAFTA Awards in 2002, photo by D L Parker
Born	Gwyneth Katherine Paltrow
Height	5' 9½" (1.77 m)
Spouse	Chris Martin (5 December 2003 - present) 2 children

Gwyneth Katherine Paltrow (born September 27, 1972) is an Academy Award-winning American actress and singer. She lives in the United Kingdom with her family.

Early life

Paltrow was born in Los Angeles, California, to the film and television director Bruce Paltrow(who was Jewish) and Blythe Danner (who was raised a Quaker). Raised in Santa Monica, she attended Spence School, a private girls' school in New York City, and briefly studied art history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before dropping out 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, which she speaks fluently.

Paltrow is a descendant of a famous 17th-century 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."

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 had 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. She 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 several critically acclaimed film roles, including Proof (2005) and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001).

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.

Singing

In 2000, Paltrow and Huey Lewis released the single "Cruisin'" as a promotion for the movie Duets. A video was shot and the song became #1 in Australia. She also sang a remake of The Temptations' song Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me) with R&B singer Babyface for the movie.

In 2002, Paltrow appeared on singer Sheryl Crow's album titled C'mon, C'mon singing with her on the track "It's Only Love".

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 from sales of items from the 'Pleasures Gwyneth Paltrow' collection for breast cancer research.

According to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission, Gwyneth Paltrow contributed $1,500 to John Kerry's campaign for President in 2004, and also contributed $2,000 to EMILY's List and $2,500 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The FEC documents also list her home address as being in New York City, though the actress lives in London.

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 Barbara Walters 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 also been linked romantically to Ben Affleck, Luke Wilson and Robert Sean Leonard.

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, 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 is a vegan who 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 is a good friend of Christina Applegate, 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.

In 2006 Paltrow was quoted in a Portuguese magazine that British people are more civilized and intelligent than Americans. The actress also said: "I love the English lifestyle". "People don't talk about work and money all the time. They talk about interesting things at dinner." She has denied making the statement.

Trivia

• 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.

• She is briefly featured in Madonna's Re-Invention Tour documentary I'm Going To Tell You A Secret, meeting Madonna after a concert in New York.

• In preparation for the movie Shallow Hal, she wore the same latex "fat suit" used during filming, and went out to a bar to gauge people's reactions. She reported that people refused to even make eye contact with her, and treated her quite rudely. She later said that she was saddened by the injustice and double standard overweight people faced.

• Film critic and commentator John Podhoretz knew Paltrow before she became famous — in fact, before she became an adult: "I babysat for her once in 1978 and she was very sweet," he wrote.

• Paltrow is a fan of the UK Big Brother. In 2004, her favourite housemate was Daniel Bryan.

• She is mentioned in Robbie Williams' song "She's Madonna" off his 2006 album Rudebox

Filmography

• Shout (1991)
• Hook (1991)
• Malice (1993)
• Flesh and Bone (1993)
• Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994)
• Higher Learning (1995)
• Jefferson in Paris (1995)
• Se7en (1995)
• Moonlight and Valentino (1995)
• Hard Eight (1996)
• The Pallbearer (1996)
• Emma (1996)
• Out of the Past (1998) (documentary) (narrator)
• Sliding Doors (1998)
• Great Expectations (1998)
• Hush (1998)
• A Perfect Murder (1998)
• Shakespeare in Love (1998)
• The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
• The Intern (2000) (Cameo)
• Duets (2000)
• Bounce (2000)
• The Anniversary Party (2001)
• The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
• Shallow Hal (2001)
• Searching for Debra Winger (2002) (documentary)
• Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002) (Cameo)
• Possession (2002)
• View from the Top (2003)
• Sylvia (2003)
• Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)
• Proof (2005)
• I'm Going to Tell You a Secret (2005) (documentary)
• Infamous (2006)
• Love and Other Disasters (2006)
• Running with Scissors (2006)

Upcoming:

• The Good Night (2007)
• Dirty Tricks (2008)
• Iron Man (2008)

External links

• interview, The Guardian UK, 27 January 2006.
• Gwyneth Paltrow at IMDb