In the interview she opens up about wrinkles (she’ll take them), Goop (“there’s no ulterior motive behind it”), and what Beyonce was like while she was pregnant (“she was incredible”). I know a lot of you can’t really stand Gwyneth, but I like her – so take that! Here are some highlights from Gwynnie’s Bazaar interview:
On Botox: “I’ll take my wrinkles,” she says. “I don’t like the Botox thing.” But she does enjoy sunshine for the vitamin D, despite “my dermatologist yelling at me.” (She admits to “little things, like lasers” and regular facials, often with the London-based Vaishaly Patel.)
On her current detox: Right now, the dedicated eater (see Gwyneth chowing on a bocadillo with Mario Batali in Spain or on fried chicken while filming Country Strong down South) is also on a 12-week detox program. “I have a lot of inflammation in my system, so I’m not having anything I’m allergic to—no gluten, no dairy, no sugar.” The trigger for these seasonal detox sessions, she says, is recognizing her physical symptoms: “I’ll wake up exhausted; I can feel my adrenal cortex being really high. When I get into bed, my heart will pound, my skin won’t be good, I’ll feel cranky, and then I’ll just know it’s time.” But such consciousness has an emotional impetus as well: She cites the death in 2002 of her beloved father, director Bruce Paltrow, from throat cancer at 58—after decades of vodka and smoking—as a catalyst for her own conversion to clean living. “All I’ve learned about nutrition and health came from his cancer,” she says. “I’ll probably have a long and healthy life because he didn’t.”
When she’s not dieting: “I eat whatever I want. I like bread and cheese and wine, and that makes my life fun and enjoyable.” But an outline of her regular diet, along with the rest of her timetable, reveals a model of restraint. She’s up every morning around 7:00 with her two children, Apple and Moses (seven and five, respectively). “I don’t really like eating that early, so I usually just have coffee and then a couple of bites of their leftovers, like granola and yogurt or scrambled eggs.”
The Goop Brand: “Everything I’ve done has been completely organic, and that’s why the brand is a strong brand, because there is no ulterior motive behind it,” she says.
On her husband, Chris Martin: The two of them seem affectionately relaxed together—”he’s very communicative,” she says, “which is rare for a British man”—at ease with their nine-year relationship and their roles as parents. “If I’m in L.A. for three days working, then my husband does the school run; it’s always one of us,” although they do have a nanny for the children. “She’s French, so she’s teaching them French, and their previous nanny was Spanish, so they’re fluent in Spanish.” But it’s Gwyneth who gives the children their bath—”we all get into the tub together”—and she’s the one who cooks dinner for them before Apple and Moses go to bed at 8:00. It’s a family dinner, unless she goes out with Chris to eat at her favorite Japanese restaurants in London or for seafood at the members-only Arts Club.
She’s saving her wardrobe for Apple: “I’ve been saving my clothes for her since before she was born. I was like, I’ll bet you anything I’ll have a daughter, and she’ll be a really cool butch lesbian and be so above clothes, and I got a very clothes-obsessed child. So if she’s a lesbian, she’s a lipstick lesbian. She doesn’t like anything avant-garde at all. She likes anything that’s pretty, pretty, pretty or has a bow or a ruffle or is pink.”
On her BFF Beyonce: As it happens, while Beyoncé was headlining the Glastonbury Festival last June (the night after Coldplay), Gwyneth was watching by the side of the stage with Jay-Z and testifies to the fact that her friend’s performance was punctuated by the miserable side effects of early pregnancy: “She was absolutely incredible, especially as she was barfing in between.”
On being a good mom & wife: “I have little kids in school. I want to maintain my marriage and my family, so I have to be here when he comes home.” Hence her recent advice to a girlfriend (who remains tantalizingly unnamed): “She is an actress and in a new relationship with someone else with a big career, and I said this may not be feminist, but you have to compromise. It’s been all about you and you’re a big deal. And if you want what you’re saying you want—a family—you have to be a wife, and that is part of the equation. Gloria Steinem may string me up by my toes, but all I can do is my best, and I can do only what works for me and my family.”
On her ex-boyfriends: Gwyneth remains discreet about her previous boyfriends, who include Brad Pitt (they dated for nearly three years from 1994 and were engaged for six months) and Ben Affleck (in the late ’90s). She met Chris Martin in 2002, three weeks after her father’s death, and married him the following year. But she does confess that she knows what it feels like to be betrayed—”I had a boyfriend who used to cheat on me all the time. I was quite naive. I knew on a cellular level, but I bought his story”—while making it clear that infidelity is not part of her marriage.
On people who cheat: She does not condemn others who stray. “The older I get, the more open-minded I get, the less judgmental I get. Life is long. I have friends who I love and admire who have had an affair. When I was younger, I would have said he’s a terrible person or she’s a terrible person. But who made these laws?” And if the commitment to remain within a relationship can be renewed, she believes, then it should survive the inevitable challenges… “I think you do fall in and out of love and you just keep going, and every time you go through a really difficult phase, you rediscover something new and it just gets better. We’ve been married for more than eight years now, and we’re still into it.”
Let’s play the guessing game – who was the boyfriend who cheated on her all the time? Was it Brad? Ben? Someone else?
I do see how she comes off as a big snob – but I still like her. She looks so unbelievably sexy in that photo below with the cutout dress!
