Price of being the original pseudoscience influencer

Gwyneth Paltrow, the Hollywood icon who became the high priestess of wellness and a blueprint for a new consumerism, is the subject of an explosive new biography

- Amy Odell

Who is Gwyneth Paltrow? That depends on who you ask. She is, of course, an Oscar-winning actress. A fashion icon. The daughter of Hollywood royalty. She’s a businesswoman and tastemaker. She’s captivating, complex, and unwittingly hilarious - but also polarising. To some, she’s a pioneer - to others, she’s a problem. Love her or hate her, Paltrow is the rare public figure who has had a real cultural impact.

It’s easy to underestimate Gwyneth. Or at least to reduce her to punchlines about jade eggs or bone broth. But the truth about her is far more complicated. Over the last few years, I’ve interviewed more than 220 people from her childhood, her acting career, and former and current employees of her lifestyle brand, Goop, about what makes her so compelling.

I learnt that Gwyneth isn’t just a celebrity, or just a brand, but a blueprint for a new kind of consumerism - one that blurred the lines between personal belief, public persona and profit-driven “wellness” ideology.

Gwyneth was the cool, ethereal blonde at the centre of late-Nineties Hollywood long before she became the high priestess of “clean” beauty and adaptogens. I remember watching her collect her Academy Award for Shakespeare in Love in that famous pink, custom Ralph Lauren dress back in 1999 when she was just 26 years old. Her relationships with the likes of Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck and Chris Martin were tabloid shorthand for elite romance.

She projected a kind of aspirational ease that was relentlessly copied, or at least attempts were made. All of it was - remains - iconic.