How Gwyneth Paltrow became a divisive, defiant icon

Some describe Paltrow as a “nepo baby”. Her father, Bruce Paltrow, was an established producer (Hill Street Blues) and her mother Blythe Danner was, and is, a noted actress (in 2000’s Meet the Parents, among many other films). She was attending theatres with her mother from infancy, but she worked for her gigs: auditioning, rehearsing and spending hours on set, determined to get the take. When she won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love in 1999 at the age of 26, her teary acceptance speech made her the butt of relentless jokes. In the same year, The Guardian labelled her “Worst Actress” in its list of “Worst Winner’s Speech Awards”. In 2023, Paltrow told Variety that the “British press was so horrible to me”.