'Gwyneth' review: Dishy bio on Gwyneth Paltrow

Gwyneth Paltrow, once known as an Oscar-winning actress, is perhaps our finest unrelatable relatable. Since 2008, she has promoted the aspirational absurdity that, with an abundance of time and capital (and if you’re feeling daring, a jade egg), women can improve themselves, becoming a tad more like, well, her.

Amy Odell’s dishy, often delicious “Gwyneth: The Biography” charts how Paltrow grew from winsome ingenue to influencer executrix: daughter of actress Blythe Danner and television producer and director Bruce Paltrow, Oscar winner), first lady of Miramax, fashion muse, It girl, girlfriend of GQ cover-worthy swains (Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck, Luke Wilson), wife and ex of Coldplay’s Chris Martin, mogul. She’s the woman who appears to have everything, much of it in navy and beige.

Odell’s take on Paltrow’s early, less-documented years is thin, reliant on tenuous sources. There’s a buffet of mean-girl quotes about a woman who has been beautiful, tall, thin, rich and famous for most of her 52 years, inducing envy from those excised from her inner sanctum. In Upper East Side theatrical productions, where Paltrow attended the exclusive all-girls Spence School, “everybody from the lowliest spear-carrier to the few boys to the upperclassmen were all simultaneously terrified of her and in awe of her and wanted to be with her,” a high school friend said.

Paltrow’s early films, like “Sliding Doors” and “Hook,” were either charming indies or bigger productions that made small use of her. For better and worse, Harvey Weinstein changed all that. After “Shakespeare in Love,” the Miramax honcho used Paltrow’s success as bait to prey on other women. Paltrow was one of the first stars to speak out about Weinstein’s harassment. The trauma of working for him, she is quoted saying here, is one of the reasons she quit acting so young. “I had a really rough boss for most of my movie career at Miramax,” Paltrow said on a podcast during the pandemic. “So you’re like, I don’t know if this is really my calling.”

The book is strongest on the Goop era: the company’s volatile financial history, and Paltrow’s central role in the factually fungible, potentially dangerous wellness market.

As for dish, there’s plenty: Paltrow dumped former pal Madonna after the singer “went off on her daughter, Lourdes” at a large gathering, behavior that disgusted Paltrow and Martin. Paltrow told friends that Pitt -- her former fiancée -- “has terrible taste in women.”

She has long been insulated from anything resembling a normal life. Perhaps that’s why she created a consumer one of her own. For the Paris promotion of her 1996 film “Emma,” Paltrow, all of 24, requested a private plane for an entourage of 10 and the penthouse suite at the Ritz and attendant rooms, and demanded that no other guests stay on that floor. Later, she took to traveling on location with two yoga instructors.

By her own admission, Paltrow “basically stopped making money from acting in 2002.” She lives extravagantly, often fueled by the generosity of sponsors. She is the ambassador and the product. Paltrow’s well-publicized second nuptials to television producer Brad Falchuk, in 2018, featured a bouquet of donated goods and services, documented in a “sourcebook” and promoted in an article on the Goop website: “The Wedding Party: GP x Brad Tie the Knot.” She asked the bathroom firm Waterworks to help outfit a $10 million home with Martin, Odell reports, and Restoration Hardware to furnish her offices and be featured in a six-year rebuild of her latest Montecito, California, home with Falchuk; the design accents are available on the Goop website.

At Goop, Odell reports, Paltrow repeatedly failed to put in the hard work, or get others to do it for her, including research into dubious wellness claims of products on the website.

Paltrow’s gift is selling, but she’s not adept at managing, Odell writes. She won’t delegate, creating an unhealthy work environment marked by frequent churn. Paltrow has a tendency to avoid conflict while rarely hearing anyone tell her no.

Her greatest cultural impact, Odell writes, is “showing the world just how much consumers will spend and how much effort they would undertake for the luxury of being well, no matter what science tells us.” In Goop world, “there wasn’t a lot of tolerance for imperfection,” Odell writes. Which is understandable, as perfection, that impossible, impractical, expensive ideal, is Paltrow’s brand.