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With her first biography, on Anna Wintour in 2022, the former editor of Cosmopolitan Amy Odell proved herself to be a meticulous and exacting biographer with a razor-sharp eye for women who have had a tremendous impact on culture.
And so, for three years, fans of Anna: The Biography have been wondering who Odell’s next subject would be. Now, we have our answer: Gwyneth Paltrow. Of course. Who else?
Ahead of the release of Gwyneth: The Biography on August 5, ELLE sat down with Odell to find out what it really takes to deep-dive into the life of an elusive A-lister, and what it’s like when your life is swallowed whole by someone else’s.
The first thing to note about Odell’s approach to Gwyneth is that she’s not in this for the salacious gossip. Yes, the stories of romances and breakups and friendships and betrayals are all here, as well as personal slights, snide remarks and a particularly chilling description of how icy Gwyneth can be when she’s not in the spotlight.
But the way Odell speaks about the subject of her latest book is almost academic: she’s interested in the psychology of someone who’s grown up in the spotlight, was seemingly destined for mega-fame and then cultivated an entire industry we now know as “wellness”, demonstrating just how far people will go, and how much money they’ll spend, to be “well” like Gwyn.
On Why She Chose Gwyneth
“Both Anna and Gwyneth had real cultural impact,” Odell says from her home in New York. It’s been a long week of media interviews, and it’s all starting to ease off. As anyone who’s been on the internet this week would know, a certain set of women have been in a bit of a tizzy about the release of Gwyneth, the ELLE office included. Everyone wants to talk to Odell.
“Love her or hate her, Gwyneth has been in the public eye for 30 years — countless glossy magazine profiles have been written about her, and what I learnt in the three years and more than 220 people I interviewed was that those stories barely scratched the surface of who she is,” Odell says.
On Who Would Talk
The best unauthorised biographies are not stories written by crazed fans; they’re intensely researched and fact-checked, and written by someone with an investigative level of journalism and who is passionate about the true story coming across.
What’s great about an unauthorised biography is that the book’s subject has no direct say in what story is being told, meaning they can’t create their own narrative. Of course, the subject can do everything in their power to ensure none of their close friends or employees speak to the author when they start poking around.
When Odell was writing Anna, Wintour made sources available to Odell. Gwyneth did no such thing. Her team initially said they would be happy to help, but then ghosted her. Her uncle Robert Paltrow also said he would be happy to help if it was alright with Gwyneth, before sending his regrets soon after. A year later, Gwyneth’s team once again agreed to help — but on their terms: Gwyneth would be allowed to fact-check it. The answer from Odell was a staunch (and correct) “No”.
Odell had to dig deep to find people to speak on the record, and she ended up with more than 22o sources who had worked with Gwyneth on movies, at goop and who were her friends. The result is a well-rounded portrait of a woman who is really unlike any other celebrity we have. Odell says her impression was that most people close to Gwyneth were “terrified” to talk about her; some goop staff had signed NDAs; others were cagier than Wintour’s former employees.
On Gwyneth Taking Over Her Life
Spending three years so immersed in someone else’s life takes its toll. As well as being an astute observer and fastidious researcher — and not to mention steely in the face of rejection from potential interviewees — a biographer needs to be an excellent compartmentaliser, lest their subject’s life consume their own.
Was Odell dreaming about Gwyneth by the end? Not so much, though she laughs at the thought. “It’s pretty intense, I’m not going to lie,” she says. “The research is a long process. And Gwyneth has had different phases in her life and career: the two distinct phases are her acting phase, which started with Flesh and Bone in the ’90s and went through until 1999 when she won the Oscar [for Shakespeare In Love] when she was 26 …” Odell is rattling off the facts of Gwyneth’s life like she knows them as well as her own.
“She quickly became kind of disillusioned with acting after that — she was experimenting with these other movies and they weren’t working out.” Gwyneth was also working with a number of brands and “had this realisation of Hey, I’m endorsing all these other brands, why don’t I use my image to start [her wellness empire] goop? and that launches a whole new career for her — and I think that was the more impactful career.”
On The Real Gwyneth
“I know this word gets thrown around a lot, but I think Gwyneth is authentic,” Odell says when she’s asked why Gwyneth carries so much appeal despite courting so much controversy. “I don’t think she ever tried to be someone she’s not — after launching goop and she was promoting very expensive things, people were having a very negative reaction to it because the recession was unfolding in the US, and people were losing their homes and she was sending out these recipes like, and I’m paraphrasing, ‘You can use any type of caviar,’ or ‘Get your little black dress from Chanel because you can pass it down to your daughter.’ I think that confident obliviousness worked for her because she wasn’t trying to be someone she’s not. She has that quote: ‘I can’t pretend to be somebody who makes $25,000 a year.’”
Odell offers another anecdote: when Gwyneth and her family would jet from coast to coast, her father, Bruce Paltrow, would fly first class and her mother, Blythe Danner, who came from a more conservative upbringing before becoming famous, would fly coach. “Once when Gwyneth got on a plane with her mom, she said, ‘You mean we’re not flying first class, we’re flying no class?’ I think people [love to hate] those moments because they’re funny and authentic.”
Whether or not Gwyneth is in on the joke is another matter. She seems to do things with a wink — the ad for Astronomer, after the company’s CEO and CPO were caught allegedly having an affair at a Coldplay concert, or telling Alex Cooper on her podcast Call Her Daddy that Ben Affleck is a “technically excellent” lover — but other times seems unaware of what she’s said. “I definitely think she knows how to get a headline, but other times I think she’s caught off-guard,” Odell says.
“At one point, she was talking about how hard it is to be an actress and a mother because they send you away on set in another country where you’re working 18-hour days and that’s tough. But the way it came out was that nine-to-five moms don’t understand. But, intellectually, we know what she’s saying: that it’s hard to be away — and it is! But the way it comes out is like she’s trying to understand normal people but because of her upbringing she just doesn’t. She grew up bi-coastal and was on movie sets from the time she was a few days old; everyone knew who she was when she was going out for those auditions. People always said she was talented, but she also doesn’t know anything else, that’s her upbringing — that’s why I can say she’s authentic, because she really is that person.”
On What Surprised Her Most
“What surprised me most about Gwyneth was hearing about what she was like when the cameras were off, or when she wasn’t in an interview,” Odell says. As the public, we see the shiny, squeaky-clean version of celebrities, and even though we know that’s probably not the real them, the image seeps into our subconscious and associates that person with these positive attributes. “There’s another side to Gwyneth — there’s a cold side, there’s an aloof side,” Odell says. “When she’s running goop, she can be icy — people compared her to Anna Wintour, which was surprising. And if she doesn’t like you, and you’re in the office or a party and you turn around, she might mime a barf face behind your back.”
On a more positive note, Odell says she was surprised at how the two distinct phases of Gwyneth’s life — acting and wellness — were intertwined. “Her acting experience helped her launch her business because when she was raising money and meeting with venture capitalists, she has to pitch goop, and what’s a pitch? It’s basically remembering some things to say and delivering it like a script.” Gwyneth is a quick study. “She learns very quickly: when she had to learn archery for Emma [in 1996], she picked that up very quickly, and when she had to learn how to do financial statements at goop, she picked that up quickly too,” Odell says.
On The goop Of It All
What Odell wants readers to remember is that while women of a certain age (read: the ELLE office) worship at the feet of 1990s Gwyneth, goop is where she has had the most cultural impact. “Goop is basically an archetype for a wellness company, and what Gwyneth did was show the world how much money people will spend and how much effort they will undergo to feel well,” Odell says.
“You see goop being copied by other companies all the time, and I think that’s for two reasons: Gwyneth gave wellness a language and a rhetoric by talking about toxins and clean living, clean eating, clean beauty, selling people clean products — you know, ‘Get the toxins out of your life and your environment’; and also, she has amazing taste — you can see it by looking at her and at her homes, and she imparted that taste to her brand to make it this gorgeous, aspirational aesthetic that people will pay a lot of money to have a piece of. She really commodified wellness as a luxury good.”
On Gwyneth’s Response
“Have you heard from Gwyneth or her team since the book was announced?” we asked.
“No.”
Gwyneth: The Biography is available to shop now.
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