GWYNETH EVERLASTING

NOT LONG AFTER SHE WON AN OSCAR AT AGE 26, Gwyneth Paltrow BAILED ON THE INDUSTRY, FINDING A CREATIVE OUTLET AND CASH FLOW IN BUILDING HER OWN BUSINESS. NOW GOOP AND THE KIDS ARE ALL GROWN UP, LEAVING PALTROW FREE TO DO WHATEVER SHE LIKES, INCLUDING HER MAJOR MOVIE COMEBACK WITH TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET

- MICHELLE RUIZ

High IN THE hills OF Montecito, up beyond Oprah's gates and Harry and Meghan's gates and an endless sprawl of privacy hedges, Gwyneth Paltrow is making coffee in her kitchen. You know the one. A kitchen that, when Architectural Digest unveiled it in a home tour in 2022, virally eclipsed the entire Nancy Meyers canon as the bougie platonic ideal. The Mediterranean-blue plates lining a wall. The marble-topped island range, where Paltrow lovingly concocts Instagram-famous "boyfriend breakfasts" for her husband of six years, TV producer Brad Falchuk. The room is bathed in natural California light and almost eerily quiet because, as we also know, her children with ex-husband Chris Martin, Apple, 20, and Moses, 18, are off at college.

"I'm Gwyneth," she says by way of introduction, and of course she is.

Paltrow wears a greige cardigan, white wide-leg jeans, shearling-lined clogs, and no apparent makeup. (Stealth wealth, which we'll get to in a bit.) At 52 she looks refreshingly like herself, with flaxen hair and vintage Noxzema-commercial skin. Unlike many of her contemporaries (not to mention much younger stars), she hasn't plumped her subtle fine lines or her lips into the atmosphere.

Paltrow's reputation-her iconography, over three decades-looms to a ridiculous degree. She's the nostalgic '90s waif and pixied Pitt (and Affleck) paramour the paparazzi, then the internet, never got over; the weeping Oscar winner turned woo-woo Goop guru. But here in her kitchen at 8 a.m. on this given Thursday, Paltrow is a mortal woman in the middle of a not-super-Goopy routine. She woke up before 6 and checked her email in the dark. Though she stocks almond, hemp, and macadamia milks for guests (we'll get to the raw milk of it all too), the wellness maven takes her own coffee with a splash of heavy cream. (Dairy credit: Clover Sonoma organic, I think.) And her group chat is blowing up.