Trouble at 15, down at 30: here’s what you don’t know about Gwyneth Paltrow

From the highs of dating Brad Pitt, the lows of ‘consciously uncoupling’ Coldplay’s Chris Martin to now shying from the spotlight, thousands of Sydneysiders got up close and personal with the star.

Gwyneth Paltrow was ‘trouble’ when she was 15, fell apart when she was 30 and found herself through being a mother. From the highs of dating 90s Brad Pitt to the lows of divorce and ‘consciously uncoupling’ Coldplay’s Chris Martin to now, shying away from the spotlight whenever she can, thousands of Sydneysiders got up close and personal with superstar Gwyneth Paltrow at Jackie O Henderson and Gemma O’Neill’s first ‘Besties’ event on Friday night.

Wearing a floral Zimmerman dress, a natural and fresh faced Paltrow spoke about her business empire Goop, navigating loss, finding new love and staying true to herself through it all.

She’s shy, self-deprecating and self-conscious. She’s felt like a failure, says sex gets better with age and swears like a trooper. Bestie Jen Aniston is always the life of the party, Cameron Diaz is the friend who will turn up unannounced and yes, she’s still friendly with Brad.

Here’s everything you never knew about the wellness guru.

Gwyneth Paltrow at Jackie O Henderson and Gemma O’Neill’s first ‘Besties’ event on Friday night.

SHE SWEARS … AND SHE GETS ROAD RAGE.

“You sick fuck,” she said to Jackie after saying she loved her movie Seven.

“And yes I get road rage … and yes, I’ve stuck my finger up …”

THE ‘CANDLE THAT SMELLS LIKE MY VAGINA’ DOES NOT SMELL LIKE HER VAGINA.

“When ‘this smells like my vagina’ candle started, first of all it started as a joke, and then it ended up turning into a product and then it caught the internet on fire. But what can be disappointing about something like that is people just love to click on the word vagina – but the point of it was, it was supposed to be this deeply feminist statement. So many of us were raised to feel shame around our body parts or sexuality, or our hormonal shifts or whatever. And so I love that it was like a little bit of a punk rock statement. It didn’t literally smell like our vaginas.”

SHE EATS CHEESEBURGERS.

“So during the week I try to follow a few rules like I try to go to bed early and I eat early so I try not to go to sleep on a full stomach. I drink tons of water and really just eat clean non processed foods, so lots of protein and vegetables. But when I travel, I eat whatever. So today I had a cheeseburger … and it was delicious.”

LOSING HER DAD CHANGED EVERYTHING

“It really wasn’t until my father died when I was 30, that things kind of all really fell apart for me. Up to that point, I was trying so hard to just hold everything together and be this person, and be successful and be the person that I’m supposed to be for my family. And I think in order to learn, you have to admit vulnerability, and you have to know that you’re breaking. And I think it was just too much – I couldn’t even admit that I was breaking and that I needed to pause. Looking back, one of the little silver linings of my father’s passing was that I got so deeply in touch with what I wanted for my life and what was important to me, and he was the most amazing parent, friend, ally … sage. And I was like ‘I want to reorient towards that’.”

Paltrow and daughter Apple in 2005. Picture: Getty

BEFORE SHE HAD DAUGHTER APPLE, SHE FELT LONELY

“I just think when you don’t know yourself, you feel lonely. And certainly in my teens and mostly in my 20s, when I was out of the house and trying to figure out who I was, I felt really lonely at times. Like sort of bereft and really lost. And then over the course of that decade, I learned about myself more. And the more I learned myself, the less lonely I got. And when she came out and I saw those big blue eyes, she healed something.”

SHE THOUGHT ABOUT DIVORCE FROM COLDPLAY’S CHRIS MARTIN FOR YEARS BEFORE THEY SEPARATED

“Almost no one in my family has ever gotten a divorce. All my best friends from growing up are still married to their college boyfriends. I felt like a failure. I felt like – I couldn’t pull it off. I couldn’t stay in it – but I tried for a long time. I adore Chris and we are great co-parents – we were meant to have kids together. But not be in a relationship. And that’s okay.”

SHE WON AN OSCAR IN 1999 FOR SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE – AND IT’S ALL A BLUR.

“I barely remember being on the stage. It’s like a weird hallucination. It was very overwhelming. And my dad was sick. My grandfather was sick and I was a kid – I was 26 years old, which is really young. And I’ve never watched that video back. God no.”

SHE WAS OFFERED A RECORD DEAL, OR TWO, AND TURNED THEM DOWN

“I just felt like I didn’t think that I had a talent for songwriting. And then I felt – who needs another person singing someone else’s songs?”

SHE’S STILL FRIENDS WITH BRAD PITT.

“He’s a great guy. I love him. He’s an amazing artist and person. I mean, breakups are hard, but I’m so glad we did (circle back to be friends). I hate that feeling when you have an ex and there’s bad feelings. I don’t have that with anyone.”

Husband Brad Falchuk and former partner Chris Martin.

HUSBAND BRAD FALCHUK SENDS HER FLOWERS TO HER HOTEL ROOM EVERY TIME THEY’RE APART

“I’ve been very lucky with Brad because I have chemistry with him – and he’s my best friend. And he cares so much about the quality of our relationship. So I always say second marriages can be really special.”

SHE HATED HER ICONIC SLIDING DOORS HAIRCUT

“It was sort of an accident, that haircut because first I started with a longer short haircut – and it didn’t go well. I had someone do it that wasn’t great. And then I was like, ‘oh, shit, now it’s short’ – and it was not cool – I felt like it was like a weird mum haircut. And then there’s a hairdresser in LA and I asked him to come over and he was like, ‘there’s only one thing to do here’ – and he cut it off. He is the one that did the Jennifer Aniston famous cut too.”

SHE WILL NOT READ THIS STORY

“It’s a rough road to get tough skin. I stopped reading press about myself when I was 22. I’m tempted, but I don’t do it. For the most part, I try to avoid it. Because I think it’s none of my business. What’s my business is who I am, how I relate to the people that I know and love.”

SHE’S HIDDEN IN CAR BOOTS TO ESCAPE PAPARAZZI

“I’ve been in trunks of cars, and you just stay in. I remember when I had Moses, I was leaving the hospital and it was crazy. I got in some random car and I was with the baby like hiding under the seat.”

WHEN SHE WAS 15 SHE WAS …

“Trouble. I when I was 15. I went on exchange to Spain. I came back a chain smoker. I think 16 is when I started sneaking out of the house and having parties when my parents were away.”

Paltrow pictured with Brad Pitt. Picture: Ke.Mazur/WireImage

SHE LOVES SYDNEY

“I was last here 20 years ago – I was on tour with Coldplay who were touring their second album, so it was a long time ago, and the paparazzi were very interested in my relationship with Chris Martin. never left the room. But (today in Sydney) was so beautiful. Everyone was apologising for the rain, but I thought it was so beautiful and moody and romantic and had a nice walk by the Opera House, which is so incredible.”

HER MUM WANTS HER TO QUIT GOOP AND GO BACK TO ACTING

“She tells me all the time,” she laughs.

“I really love what I’m doing. It’s sort of hard to understand. I think for people like my mum or other people who are like, ‘wow, but like you were a movie star, wasn’t that fun?’ But I like my nine to five, not travelling all the time and being away for months at a time. When I was doing it, I was doing like three movies a year, five movies a year, I was caning it. I think when I had my daughter when I turned 30, that was the first time I had a breath to assess my career – and was I happy? And that changed things for me.”

SHE NAMED IT GOOP BECAUSE …

GP are her initials – and the ‘oo’ in the middle because her friend said she should be like other successful companies that have a double ‘o’ – like Facebook, Google, Yahoo …

“It’s really just about sharing and about connecting people to good things – and that’s what it came out of. I’m like that person that if you want to know something and I can give you the answer, it fills my heart and gives me such a buzz. And so it really just came out of that. And I have to say, I am surprised by the twists and turns that it’s taken, growing the business and all the different verticals that we have, and all the things we do and I work so hard – when we had our 15th anniversary the other week, I was like, holy shit.”

SO WHY START HER OWN BUSINESS IN THE FIRST PLACE?

“I think that creating a business is such a radical act of self belief. And of course I would say always assess the risk … I never suggest that people should just objectively throw away their day job if it doesn’t make financial sense. But having an idea and thinking it all the way through and building something, and putting it into the world is one of the most rewarding things that I think anybody could do. So I always encourage people to really let it germinate and see what happens. I always think – we’re on this planet one time. Unless you’re Shirley MacLaine and you think we keep coming back over and over, which might be true. But I feel we’re here one time, in this body, in this incarnation, and so if you feel passionate about something and compelled to do it, you should do it.”

Paltrow with Jackie O.

THIS IS WHAT SHE REMINDS HERSELF – OFTEN

“In business and in life, we have setbacks, and friction points every day. How do I deal with it? I think more holistically, I understand that it’s just so deeply part of life. We learn the most when we fail, or when we’re suffering. All of the rich opportunity is in those times. When things are good, and you’re coasting you’re probably not learning that much about what you need to correct about yourself or your business. So I’ve tried to be more sanguine and take a much wider perspective and understand when things go wrong, it’s part of it, as opposed to feeling like the world’s gonna end. For a long time, I did feel like that. I felt like ‘we’re gonna miss this delivery date or something’s wrong’ and it felt like my nervous system and everything was going to collapse. I think over time I’ve learned, you know what? It’s going to be okay. I don’t know how it’s gonna be okay, but it will be. It always is. And even if it’s not, okay, it’s okay.”

SHE CARES FOR HERSELF BY …

Seeing a therapist. Talking to friends. Meditating for 20 minutes in the morning and taking a bath every night.

SHE’S OPEN TO SELLING GOOP ONE DAY … MAYBE

“We still have so much work to do – we want to go into other countries and there’s just a lot of growth. I mean, at some point, I would be open to (selling). I was talking to my main investor the other day, and he was saying, Look, if you want to, if you don’t want to sell it … that’s okay, too. So we’ll see.”

SHE’S 51 – AND HAPPY TO AGE

“For women in our culture now, we’re supposed to be all these things and supposed to look a certain way. And when I turned 40 I really freaked out because I thought, but wait, if I was hired because I looked like a leading lady, what does it mean when I don’t look like that anymore? What happens to my value? And I still wince when I see I’ve got a wrinkle there or looking at that photo … but then I really tried to intervene quickly and think ‘no, I’m so lucky. I’m healthy. I have wisdom. I have a beautiful life. And it’s a good thing to become the old lady. That’s wonderful.”

SHE USED TO SMOKE

“Those were the days,” she laughed.

“I don’t smoke anymore. I don’t miss it anymore, it’s been a long time now. Although I did have a dream the other night that I was smoking – and then I woke up panicked that I had.”

HER KIDS AREN’T SPOILT

“It was very important to us that they had jobs after school and they understand the value of a dollar. They’re good kids, they really are. They get it. They’re grounded. They also know that they’re in a weird life to a certain extent, but they’re very polite, and they’re good kids.”

NOT MUCH SCARES HER

“I mean, sometimes I sort of arbitrarily get scared about – what if something happens. I get anxiety sometimes and I’ll catastrophise, but that’s not real. You know? I don’t I don’t have a lot of fear.”

SHE’D LOVE TO RETIRE FROM THE SPOTLIGHT OF PUBLIC LIFE.

“I mean, what would I miss? Having reflected back to me that someone thinks I’m special? You know what I mean? So what I would want to know - what I would miss?”

SHE’S AN INTROVERT

“I’m an extroverted introvert – or something like that. I can get energy from the right people. But generally, I get tired from crowds or I don’t like to be the centre of attention and I don’t like to speak in public.”

And a few more pearls of wisdom … sex gets better with age. The friend most likely to turn up to her house unannounced? Cameron Diaz. And while they’re ‘too old’ to dance on tables, the last one to leave a party would be Jen Aniston, every time.