Is Gwyneth Paltrow's relationship with acting over? It's complicated.
In recent years, the 48-year-old Oscar winner, who used to star in multiple movies a year, has been "semi-retired a bit"—her words—from the job that made her famous. She has focused on her popular Goop lifestyle brand while making appearances in the final Avengers films (and Spider-Man: Homecoming...does someone want to remind her?) as well as her husband Brad Falchuk's Netflix series The Politician.
In an upcoming interview on Quarantined with Bruce on SiriusXM's Radio Andy network, set to air on Friday, Dec. 11, Paltrow discussed transitioning away from acting and dealing with public scrutiny early on in her career.
"I think that when you hit the bullseye, when you're 26 years old and you're a metrics driven person who, frankly, doesn't love acting that much as it turns out," the actress told host Bruce Bozzi. "I was kinda like, 'Okay, I, I don't.' It wasn't like, I felt like this isn't worth doing. I sort of felt like, well, now who am I supposed to be? Like, what am I, what am I driving towards?"
She continued, "Part of the shine of acting wore off, you know, being in such intense public scrutiny, being a kid who's like living every breakup on every headline, like being criticized for everything you do, say and wear, and also...it's so transitory, you're always all over."
Paltrow and Brad Pitt met on the set of the movie Se7en and dated between 1995 and 1997. The two were even engaged at one point.
After her split from Pitt, Paltrow dated Ben Affleck on and off for several years until 2000. They met at a dinner hosted by now-disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein in 1997 and co-starred in his films Shakespeare In Love, which won the actress her only Oscar, and rom-com Bounce.
Paltrow wed Coldplay front man Chris Martin in 2003. The two, parents to daughter Apple, 16, and Moses, 16, famously "consciously uncoupled" in 2014 and finalized a divorce in 2016. Paltrow and her current husband Falchuk have been married since September 2018.
In her SiriusXM interview, Paltrow also said that it's "hard to plant roots" as an actress, noting she is "such a homebody."
"I like to be with my old friends and cook and squeeze my kids," she said. "Like I don't want to be alone in a hotel room in Budapest for six weeks. Like, it's just not who I am."
Her terrifying experiences with Weinstein didn't help. "To be totally candid, I had a really rough boss for most of my movie career at Miramax," she said. "So you're like, 'I don't know if this is really my calling,' so I'm still trying to parse out what came from what, and you know, where, how my life changed course. But I think that stew is a big piece of it."
Paltrow worked on five films co-produced by Weinstein, who is currently serving 23 years in prison in Wende Correctional Facility in New York State for sexual assault and rape. He has denied all charges and the dozens of other similar allegations from at least 70 different women, including Paltrow, which have not led to criminal prosecution, but did inspire the global launch of the #MeToo movement in October 2017.
Paltrow had told the New York Times that Weinstein sexually harassed her in a hotel room when she was 22. She said she refused the producer's advances and told her then-boyfriend Pitt. Paltrow continued to work with him and said she "was expected to keep the secret."
She later told CNBC that she feels "happy" to have helped encourage the #MeToo conversations, adding, "It's my hope that this is the beginning of something important and different and that my daughter, when she goes into the workplace, won't experience what...millions of other women have had to endure. And so it feels important, and I'm happy that I have played a small part in it."