Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Gwyneth Paltrow was the platonic ideal of the It Girl and Hollywood nepo-baby, dating Brad Pitt and Ben Affleck and winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Shakespeare in Love. Then, in 2008, Paltrow engineered a career detour nobody quite saw coming: She launched a website and free weekly newsletter recommending her favourite restaurants, travel destinations, luxury hotels, fashion boutiques and day spas- a Gwyneth Hot List, you could say.

Thus was the birth of Goop, a trailblazing platform in wellness, style and beauty that in less than a decade grew into a sprawling media and e-commerce enterprise. It has, at various times, sold clothing, beauty products, vibrators, homeware (including a headline-making vagina-scented candle) and a meal delivery service, and produced travel guides, cookbooks, a newsletter, a podcast, conferences and a Netflix series.

Built on Paltrow’s “beauty, charm and pedigree,” Goop became “the authority on what we put in our bodies (supplements), how we treat our bodies (sleep, detoxes and exercise), and what we put on our bodies (serums and creams),” writes journalist Amy Odell in her new book, Gwyneth: The Biography, published by Gallery Books this week. Paltrow gave wellness a narrative, and a beautiful, tasteful aesthetic. She repositioned it as a luxury, and showed that it could be monetised beyond charging for facials, massages and beauty products. She spearheaded the transformation of what was known as the “global spa economy” into Big Wellness, a 6.3 trillion dollar global industry rooted in pseudoscience and specious health claims. Along the way, Odell writes, Paltrow became “one of the biggest and most polarising cultural influencers of the 21st century.”

In Gwyneth, which is based on more than 220 interviews with Paltrow’s childhood pals, film colleagues, close friends and former Goop employees, Odell shows how Paltrow “helped bring the wellness movement and alternative medicine into the mainstream — to the horror of doctors and academics,” who regularly debunked Goop’s declarations in print and on camera.

For a long time, both Paltrow and Goop were able to slough off the medical community’s criticism like so many dead skin cells, because the brand’s customers would buy what she was selling no matter what. Paltrow was Goop’s superpower: the company’s founder, chief executive and ambassador, who claimed to practice what it preached, and embodied all that it promised.

Paltrow connected to her customers and subscribers with her “straight dope” talk — one of her Goop Gift Guides, for example, was called “Ridiculous but Awesome,” and she told her “goopies” that she likes her wrinkles — and assured them that if they bought her message, and the products she hawked on Goop, they could live, and even look, like her. As Odell posits, Paltrow used her fame “to commodify her taste and lifestyle, and sell it back to us, even though her life is the very definition of something money can’t buy.”

At the same time, in the business community, the former It Girl came across as the ultimate zeitgeist channeler, able to swiftly adapt to cultural shifts and bail on initiatives that didn’t work. She refashioned herself as the Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart of the clean living space, creating a new template for celebrity entrepreneurs, such as the Kardashian/Jenners, Rihanna and Hailey Bieber, to follow. With Goop, Odell writes that Paltrow gave “a master class in commanding the attention economy that now rules culture.” (Her appearance in a video this week as a “temporary spokesperson” for Astronomer, the company at the centre of the Coldplay kiss-cam scandal, only underscores this point.)

But all was not well at the wellness brand. Employing the same dogged reporting she brought to Anna: The Biography, her 2022 bestseller on long-time Vogue editor Anna Wintour, Odell discovers that under the veneer of quiet perfection and rarified taste, Paltrow’s erratic, aloof and, at times, wicked behaviour created a toxic work environment of epic proportions.

What was seen from the outside as flexibility and adaptability was, in fact, Paltrow’s dizzyingly short attention span, resulting in zig-zag decisions that confounded and exhausted employees. Her queenly demands — like having her test-kitchen chef prepare her lunch daily, and expecting employees to respond to her internal communications instantly — further alienated the people who worked for her. When her orders or standards were not met, she’d turn snippy and cold. “I can be mean,” Paltrow has admitted. “I can ice people out.” Perhaps not surprisingly, Goop burned through staff.

While Goop churned internally, its outward appearance largely remained as flawless and smooth as Paltrow’s complexion. She’d meet with potential investors, and, by expertly playing the role of a steady, hands-on chief executive, convince them to give her millions for Goop. She’d pose for selfies, too, which no doubt helped seal the deals. Odell reports in the book that in 2018, Goop was valued at an astounding 250 million dollars. Yet, she writes, it has never experienced sustained profitability. As Paltrow’s father, the director and producer Bruce Paltrow, once told her about the difference between the public perception of her and her true self: “You’ve got the whole country fooled.”

Until she didn’t. Eventually, government authorities cracked down on Goop for spurious health claims regarding products it sold on its site. Like the Egg, an ovum-shaped stone in jade or rose quartz that Goop expert Shiva Rose recommended inserting in the vagina to “increase orgasm” and “invigorate our life force.” The medical community condemned the Egg, warning it could lead to bacterial vaginosis or toxic shock syndrome. California district attorneys sued Goop over its unproven statements, and the company was fined. The site continued to sell the Egg without those claims.

Once it became clear that Goop was not the unicorn that investors initially thought it would be, they began to turn away. They weren’t the only ones. Though the wellness industry is booming — it is expected to reach 9 trillion dollars worldwide by 2028, and the full-throated embrace of supplements and “doing your own research” has become official US policy under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — Goop’s business has stagnated. Last year, the newsletter Puck reported that Goop sales have been flat since 2021, and, in 2024, the company laid off about one fifth of its 216-person workforce, including several employees in the content department. As a result, the site has significantly reduced its editorial component, and amped up e-commerce. And Odell reports that there is talk inhouse of selling the company. (Paltrow did say in a March 2025 interview that she’s “not thinking about an exit right now.”)

Is it worth anything without Paltrow? She is the reason most consumers patronise Goop. Will she stay? Hard to say, though her commitment to the company is clearly less ardent than it once was. She’s spoken publicly about wanting to slow down and the toll that being a CEO has taken, and she has pivoted back to film full time, with two new movies out later this year, including one with Timothée Chalamet. Which begs the question: Who does Gwyneth Paltrow really want to be: America’s Sweetheart? An It Girl? Influencer? Entrepreneur? Tycoon? Maybe, as with her film career, all have simply been roles, and once she plays them, she moves on.

Despite Goop’s longevity, Paltrow still defies comparison. She’s not, after all, very much like Oprah or Martha. (They both made billions.) And she’s not much like the Kardashians either — her Beverly-Hills-by-way-of-Spence sangfroid means she’s never been accused of vulgarity or dismissed as “famous only for being famous.” What’s certain is this: Whatever she does next, we’ll be paying close attention.