Gwyneth Paltrow Says She Lost the Acting Bug After Having Daughter Apple: 'I Burned Myself Out'
Don’t expect Gwyneth Paltrow to make her return as leading lady anytime soon.
The 47-year-old actress and Goop CEO, who won an Oscar in 1999 for Shakespeare in Love, has no desire to go back to full-time acting.
“Literally never—nev-er,” she told Harper’s Bazaar of ever getting the acting bug again. “When I was acting I really burned myself out. When the flywheel kicked in, I was doing three to five movies a year. I really got to the point where even the little things, like sitting in the van going to set, getting your makeup touch-ups, and everything—I really don’t know that I can bear it.”
She continued by explaining that the breaking point came when she had her first child with ex-husband Chris Martin, now-15-year-old daughter Apple. The two also share son Moses, 13.
“The last movie I starred in, I was pregnant with my daughter,” she recalled. “It was a movie called Proof, an adaptation of a play I did in London, and I was like, ‘I’ve had it. I can’t do this anymore.’ I had morning sickness and I was dying, and I had these five-page monologues. So when I had her, I knew I was going to take a big chunk of time off. And I’ve never starred in anything again.”
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Though she’s appeared in a few projects since, including the Iron Man franchise and some Avengers movies, Paltrow stayed true to her word and has only played supporting roles. The last time she acted in a movie outside the Marvel Cinematic Universe was 2015’s Mortdecai, where she played Johnny Depp’s wife.
On the TV side, Paltrow last acted in Netflix’s The Politician, which she agreed to appear in and executive produce after husband Brad Falchuk wrote the part for her.
In September, Paltrow sat down with Harry Kargman, Founder and CEO of Kargo, for a panel at Advertising Week New York, where she discussed her unlikely career move back to television.
“I married a TV writer… he’s fantastic but he sort of dragged me back to the old job,” said Paltrow of Falchuk, a producer and writer on Ryan Murphy’s high school political satire.
She admitted there was a big reason for wanting to switch up her career, however.
“I wouldn’t say I’m that passionate about it anymore…I have had a lot of good luck and a lot of hard work, which led to a really good film career…at a certain point I felt like it wasn’t what I wanted to do …so I did a little pivot,” she shared of creating her beauty brand, Goop.
