Gwyneth: The Biography
By Amy Odell
Published July 29, 2025
Simon & Schuster
🤩🤩🤩
I believe if you ask any famous person, they will have known they were going to be famous. It’s like a predestined thing.”
-Gwyneth Paltrow, Vanity Fair, September 2000
I enter McNally Jackson, SOHO in search of a signed copy Mark Ronson’s newly-released autobiography. Coming up empty-handed—this is the third bookshop I’ve visited in my quest—I find an alternate read and approach the elder behind the sales counter.
A Gen Z cuts in front of me and interjects, “Do you carry War and Peace?”
“Honey, we’re not a bookstore if we don’t have War and Peace.” She nods to me, Brooklyn-accent in full force, “How about that?”
I sheepishly place my not-so-literary haul—Gwyneth: The Biography, on the countertop.
“Oh she’s so pretty. Are you a fan?”
Not ready to admit it’s a hate-read, I offer, “She’s in a lot of movies?”
Flummoxed, the cashier smiles weakly, “Well, enjoy.”
As I exit, book in hand, I begin to interrogate my relationship with the illustrious subject of Amy Odell’s latest biography. I did read Conscious Uncoupling, the controversial tome that Gwyneth catapulted to household fame and notoriety following her separation from Chris Martin. Going through a divorce myself at the time, I remember thinking the criticism of her was far from founded. Even removing her famous suitors Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck and over-rated movies including Oscar-winning performance in Shakespeare in Love from the equation, she decidedly deserves credit for her business acumen. More recently, I did encourage my friend to make a mock website in the “Goop” style and font called “Poop” selling similarly shitty fake wares. Vaginal stone eggs aside, having purchased Amy’s first biography Anna, an exposing look at the Now-dethroned Vogue matriarch, I eagerly read Gwyneth to see what new tidbits can be gleaned from this unauthorized research project.
It should come as no surprise that the woman who claims to have founded “wellness” went to a seaside private school in Santa Monica where her morning kindergarten lesson consisted of a guided meditation followed by freestyle drawing to foster artistic expression. Perhaps a few surprises await as Amy gives us a fact-based fictional recreation of the early lives of Gwyneth’s parents, Gwyneth’s upbringing, and rise with actual quotes from countless public interviews and published articles. Whereas Anna offered Amy the testimonies of her assistants and coterie, Gwyneth ultimately refused to be interviewed and would not give express permission to those in her closer circles to be interviewed.
Will we find out what happened with Harvey Weinstein and how she avoided Mira Sorvino’s fate? Should I spring for that latest GoopGenes Serum? Why are her Genes okay but not Sydney Sweeney’s? I guess you will have to read it and probably not weep.\
