It's been about three years since Gwyneth Paltrow has done any acting, but does the Oscar winner miss this part of her life?
"No, I don't," she said in a preview clip for her upcoming interview on NBC News' Sunday Today With Willie Geist. "I really don't miss it at all."
Paltrow last appeared in the Netflix series The Politician, which was created by her husband Brad Falchuk, and in Avengers: Endgame in 2019. Over the years, she's starred in several films, including the Iron Man movies, Emma, The Talented Mr. Ripley and Great Expectations.
But these days, Paltrow is all about Goop, the lifestyle brand she launched in 2008. "I'm so lucky that I got to do it, and I'm sure I still will at some point," she said about her acting career. "The team is always trying to get me to do a movie. But I really love what I do, and I love how immediate it is, and how, you know, we're able to create product out of thin air that we believe in so much. Like, that's so powerful."
In fact, the Hollywood star says she doesn't "daydream about the movie business at all." But as she noted, fans could still see her return to acting one day—maybe on the live stage?
"I did promise my mother [Blythe Danner], at some point before I die, I told her that I would go and, you know, do a play," Paltrow said. "So I'm going to deliver on that promise at some point."
This transition away from acting didn't happen overnight. In fact, Paltrow remembered questioning what's next after she won her Academy Award for her lead role in the 1998 movie Shakespeare in Love—though she noted it "wasn't conscious at the time."
"I think that when you hit the bull's-eye 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, I was kind of like, 'OK,'" Paltrow told Bruce Bozzi on a 2020 episode of SiriusXM's Quarantined with Bruce. "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 driving towards?'"
Living in the public eye also played a role in Paltrow stepping away from the craft. "I think part of the shine of acting wore off, you know, being in such intense public scrutiny," she added. "Being a kid who's, like, living every breakup on every headline, being criticized for everything you do, say and wear."
Being away from home for long periods of time while making movies didn't help either.
"It's so transitory," Paltrow (who shares daughter Apple Martin, 18, and son Moses Martin, 16, with ex-husband Chris Martin) continued. "You're always all over. It's hard to plant roots. Like, I'm such a homebody. You know me. I like to be with my old friends and cook and squeeze my kids. 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."
In addition, she said she "had a really rough boss for most of my movie career at Miramax." All of these factors, Paltrow continued, made her question, "'I don't know if this is really my calling.'"
"So, I'm still trying to parse out what came from what and how my life changed course," she said on the show. "But I think that stew is a big piece of it."
Paltrow's full interview will air on the July 24th episode of Sunday TODAY with Willie Geist.
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