Gwyneth Paltrow is a woman of many talents—acting, entrepreneurship, lifestyle influencing… But if she has her way, she might not be in the public eye much longer—that is, if she was being serious during her recent Bustle interview. Honestly, it’s kind of hard to tell.
Partway through an interview about her life, her company Goop, and her thoughts about skincare, reporter Emma Rosenblum jokingly dropped the bomb: “So who’s going to buy Goop and make you hundreds of millions of dollars?”
Paltrow said that for now, she has no idea. “We’re not ready to sell yet,” she replied. “I need a few more years.”
When Rosenblum suggested that she could “make a dramatic exit” on her 55th birthday, the 51-year-old seemed perfectly content with the idea.
“I will literally disappear from public life,” Paltrow said. “No one will ever see me again.” When asked if she derives any pleasure from that aspect of her career, she was unequivocal: “No. I don’t.”
Paltrow has discussed this aspect of her personality before. A few years ago, she opened up about her reasons for leaving Hollywood on Bruce Bozzi’s SiriusXM show, “Quarantined with Bruce.”
After hitting “the bullseye” at 26 and realizing that she’s “a metrics driven person who, frankly, doesn’t love acting that much,” Paltrow explained in 2020 (per USA Today) that she “sort of felt like, well, now who am I supposed to be? Like, what am I, what am I driving towards?”
Then, as in her Bustle interview, Paltrow alluded to her fraught relationship with being a public figure.
“Part of the shine of acting wore off, you know, being in such intense public scrutiny, being a kid who’s like living every breakup on every headline, like being criticized for everything you do, say and wear,” she said. Plus, she added, the job made it difficult to settle down.
“I like to be with my old friends and cook and squeeze my kids,” she said. “Like, I don’t want to be alone in a hotel room in Budapest for six weeks… It’s just not who I am.”