Loopier than you thought

Amy Odell's 'Gwyneth: The Biography' presents the Goop guru, Oscar-winning actor and Hollywood royal as detached from reality but also in on the joke, writes Katie Rosseinsky

- Katie Rosseinsky

In 1997, Gwyneth Paltrow made a request to Marie Claire that was outlandish even by Hollywood standards. The actor, whose star was then firmly in the ascendancy, if not quite at the 'It girl' levels it would reach later in that decade, had been approached to guest-edit an issue of the magazine. Her condition for agreeing? The publication would have to send her to a deserted island off the coast of Belize for three days, so that she could write about the experience. Paltrow packed just a few essentials — including a machete, a torch and a few vegetables — and slept on the sand in the open air. When she swam in the ocean, she didn’t let a sighting of a nearby shark put her off — she “just knew” that it wouldn’t attack her. After all, she was Gwyneth Paltrow.

In the resulting diary-style article, which appeared in Marie Claire’s January 1998 edition, she wrote that her brief, self-inflicted foray into Robinson Crusoe territory had taught her that “I am stronger than I thought. I am braver than I thought”. This strange anecdote is one of many that have been excavated by Amy Odell for Gwyneth: The Biography, the former Cosmopolitan.com editor’s odyssey into the world of one of Hollywood’s most compelling but confusing figures.

It’s also an episode that encapsulates the contradictions of the Paltrow persona, even before this persona was fully fleshed out in the public imagination. The actor, then best known for her lead role in Emma and her relationship with Brad Pitt, comes across like a hothouse flower with surprising resilience. She wants privacy (“I’m positive that there are no paparazzi out there, not that I wouldn’t put it past them,” she wrote) but seeks it through the medium of a publicity stunt. She allows us access to a vulnerability behind the ice princess image, but does so in a way that seems guaranteed to court hilarity rather than sympathy. The Miami Herald