Gwyneth Paltrow

Biography

Gwyneth Kate Paltrow Falchuk (/ˈpæltroʊ/ PAL-troh; born September 27, 1972) is an American actress and businesswoman. She is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award.

Paltrow gained notice for her early work in films such as Seven (1995), Emma (1996), Sliding Doors (1998), and A Perfect Murder (1998). She garnered wider acclaim for her performance as Viola de Lesseps in the historical romance Shakespeare in Love (1998) which won her several awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actress.

This was followed by roles in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Shallow Hal (2001), and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004).

After becoming a parent in 2004, Paltrow significantly reduced her acting workload. She made occasional appearances in films, such as the drama Proof (2005), which earned her a nomination for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress.

 In 2009, she received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Spoken Word Album for Children for the children's audiobook Brown Bear and Friends. In addition, she won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her guest role as Holly Holliday on the Fox musical television series Glee in 2011. From 2008 to 2019, she portrayed Pepper Potts in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Beginning in 1995, Paltrow has been the face of Estée Lauder's Pleasures perfume; she was previously the face of the American fashion brand Coach. She is the founder and CEO of the lifestyle company Goop, which has been criticized for promoting pseudoscience, and has authored several cookbooks.

Gwyneth Kate Paltrow was born on September 27, 1972, in Los Angeles, to actress Blythe Danner and film producer-director Bruce Paltrow. She has a younger brother, Jake, who is a director and screenwriter. Paltrow's father was Jewish,while her mother is Christian. She was raised celebrating “both Jewish and Christian holidays.” Her brother had a traditional Bar Mitzvah when he turned 13. 

Her father's Ashkenazi Jewish family emigrated from Belarus and Poland, while her mother has Pennsylvania Dutch (German) as well as some Irish and English ancestry. Paltrow's paternal great-great-grandfather was a Rabbi in Nowogród, Poland, and a descendant of the well-known Paltrowicz family of rabbis from Kraków.

Paltrow is a half-cousin of actress Katherine Moennig, through her mother, and a second-cousin of former U.S. Congresswoman Gabby Giffords (AZ-08) through her father. Through Giffords, she is a second-cousin-in-law of U.S. Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. Her godfather is director Steven Spielberg. Her uncle is opera singer and actor Harry Danner, whose daughter, actress Hillary Danner, is Paltrow's cousin and close friend. 

Paltrow recalls their family gatherings: “Hillary and I always had this in common, and to this day ... cooking for people we love, eating, hanging out as a family. It's how we were raised. It's what we do.” Another cousin is Rebekah Paltrow Neumann, whose spouse is the Israeli-American millionaire Adam Neumann, founder of WeWork.

Paltrow was raised in Santa Monica, California, where she attended Crossroads School, before enrolling in the Spence School, an all-girls private school in Manhattan. Later, she studied art history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before dropping out to act.

 She is an "adopted daughter" of Talavera de la Reina (Spain), where at 15, she spent a year as an exchange student and learned to speak Spanish. She is also conversant in French, as her family frequently traveled to the South of France throughout her childhood.