Gwyneth Paltrow can’t understand why she was once named the world’s “Most Hated Celebrity” by a magazine.
In a recent interview on the BBC show HardTalk at the Cannes Lions festival, the 43-year-old actress and Goop lifestyle guru told host Stephen Sackur that she had a hard time believing she had earned that title from Star magazine in 2013.
“First of all, I was like, ‘I’m the most hated celebrity?'” Paltrow asked with a chuckle. “More than, like, Chris Brown? What did I do?”
“All I can do is be my authentic self,” the Avengers star told Sackur. “But I think there are things about me that make people draw conclusions. For example, there is the perception that I grew up very wealthy and that I was given, you know… that I was sort of raised with a silver spoon in my mouth, which inspires a lot of resentment.”
Paltrow added that while it is true that she attended an elite prep school in Manhattan, her father, Hollywood producer Bruce Paltrow, “never gave me anything” after graduation.
“I never had any supplementation, he never helped me with my rent, I never had a trust fund,” the actress said. “So the idea that I am spoiled or that I didn’t work for what I have, that’s just not accurate. But I can see how somebody might have that perception.”
Paltrow has repeatedly defended her status as a self-made woman in recent months. In February, the actress told Glamour magazine that she had “never taken a dime” from her parents.
But while that may be true, Paltrow is, of course, the daughter of Bruce Paltrow and famed Hollywood actress Blythe Danner. In fact, a teenaged Paltrow got her first acting role in the 1989 television movie High, produced by her famous father. And the actress likely picked up some acting tips from her mother, who has more than 100 screen credits to her name. Paltrow told Harper’s Bazaar last year that she was inspired to get into acting after watching Danner’s successful career.
As for why she was once named “Most Hated Celebrity,” Paltrow could be said to present a somewhat different version of herself than she perhaps realizes.
The actress once said that she feels “incredibly close to the common woman.” But Paltrow’s lifestyle website, Goop, frequently feels aimed at exactly the opposite of the “common woman.”
The publication’s holiday gift guides regularly features items that are out of reach financially for regular women, including $46,000 board games and $12,000 vases (not to mention a $15,000 24k gold vibrator featured in the website’s first-ever “Sex Issue”).
And common women don’t really drink $200 smoothies (with extra “moon dust” to boost sex drive), host President Obama in their backyards or steam-clean their genitals to get an “energetic release.”
Paltrow was also roundly mocked last year for pledging to live on $29 worth of food stamps for one week, only to quit four days in to the challenge.
Whatever the reasoning behind the dubious honor, Paltrow likely doesn’t mind all that much. The actress told Glamour that she “very rarely” lets negative criticism get to her head.
“I don’t lose sleep over it,” she told the magazine of her critics. “It’s my business to live my life and learn my lessons. I don’t care what anybody else thinks.”
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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