Gwyneth Paltrow Pays Tribute to Daughter Apple on Her 20th Birthday: ‘My Lil Ride or Die’

Gwyneth Paltrow can’t believe her “most extraordinary” daughter Apple Martin just turned 20 years old.

The Goop head, 51, underlined her disbelief by sharing a series of baby pictures via Instagram on Tuesday, May 14.

“How can it be that you are 20 today? It feels surreal!” she wrote.

Paltrow went on to share her favorite attributes of her daughter, whom she shares with Coldplay frontman Chris Martin.

“I love your WWII insights as much as I love your physical comedy. You are the most fun to be with and you have always been,” she wrote. “From those days when it was always you and me to now, you are my lil ride or die. You are everything to me and I am so proud of you.”

Apple met the outpouring of love with one of her own.

“You are the best mama a girl could ask for,” she commented. “I am so lucky the universe gave me to you.”

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This isn’t the first time that Paltrow has been bowled over by the passage of time. She previously shared that the thought of her son Moses leaving home for college gave her “a nervous breakdown.”

“I’ve oriented my whole life around them and their schedules and when school starts,” she said during a Goop Health Summit in Carlsbad, California last month. “You start to let go in increments when they’re driving themselves around or doing certain things. It is a slower process. I feel really lucky because I have a close group of mom friends, and we all raised our kids alongside one another. So we’re kind of in it together.”

Paltrow has two children with Martin and two step-children via her marriage to Glee co-creator Brad Falchuk. Apple is enrolled at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and Moses is heading to Brown in the fall. Both of Falchuk’s children are also college-aged, with Isabella attending Cornell and his son Brody going off to school later this year. Paltrow told Us Weekly that Apple going off to school was a “major transition” in October 2022.

“I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew it would be hard because Apple and I are so close and were together all the time,” she shared.

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Martin, 47, for his part, is engaged to Dakota Johnson – the pair have been dating since 2017 – and he reportedly couldn’t be happier at the way he and Paltrow were able to coparent their kids. An insider told Us exclusively that “Chris couldn’t feel more grateful” and characterized their relationship as “seamless.”

“[Martin and Paltrow are] focused on putting their children first despite things not having worked out between them,” the source added.