Goop Gets Bazaar

Gwyneth Paltrow is featured in this month's Harper's Bazaar. I was all ready to hate on the interview, but it's conducted by Full Frontal's Samantha Bee! So I'll try to keep an open mind. Here are some of the highlights:

Samantha Bee: "People have such an imagined version of your life. You've been so daringly open about your personal life and have revealed intimate details about parenting and your marriage that in some ways people feel like they have permission to speak personally about you. And when they do in a negative way, how do you process that?"

Gwyneth Paltrow: "When I was starting out, I would get printouts of what was being written about me that week. At first it was all good things, and then it started to turn. I very quickly learned, "This isn't good, this isn't helping me." These were strangers, and they were opining on anything in my life, from where I ate dinner to what movie I chose to do to who I was dating, and I was just like, "This isn't going to be beneficial to my process as a human being in this lifetime." But it was a very important exercise for me in terms of really understanding that one's sense of self is internal. I have had an extreme opportunity to learn that lesson, and I think it's been such a blessed fortune. Occasionally I'll come across something that's just annoying, but for the most part it's irrelevant to me."

SB: "I guess it's just a long process of cultivating that sense of self where you don't need somebody else to set the compass for you. Did your parents help instill that in you?"

GOOP: "My father was really good at having me stand on my own two feet, both financially and philosophically. His whole parenting philosophy was to give my brother and me the skills to be grown-ups and the curiosity to ask the right questions. My drive is something that I don't fully understand. I don't know if I came to this life with it or if it's something that came to me in my childhood, but I do feel that some of the things my parents said to me and how they raised me really stuck with me. I remember when I started acting and didn't get a part and was really jealous of the girl who got it. My mom would say to me, "If you don't get a part, that means it's not your part. It's just not yours. You will have your parts." It really recalibrated me at a very young age to where I could be driven because I was trying to achieve things for myself, and that had nothing to do with what anybody else was doing."

SB: "You're a very famous person. Can you walk out your front door?"

GOOP: "Yes. I've learned to navigate it. If I'm somewhere where there are a lot of tourists, then I'm
asking for it. But if I go to the market or I'm back-to-school shopping with my kids, it's not a problem. Some people ask for pictures, but it's completely fine. I'm able to be a normal mom for the most part. I'm in [clothing store] Brandy Melville like all the other moms."

SB: "When you're stressed out, what's the thing in your life that becomes a metaphor for the inner chaos?"

GOOP: "I cannot function if there is a physical mess around me. If everything is falling apart, I go on a cleaning frenzy."

SB: "Has anyone ever said anything to you that was a complete game changer?"

GOOP: "I remember when I was maybe 27 years old and kind of at the height of my movie stardom—it was around the time of the Oscar and this and that. I think I was very much believing my own hype, which how could you not? I was sitting with my dad, feeling great about my life and everything that was happening, and he was like, "You know, you're getting a little weird…You're kind of an asshole." And I was like, "What the hell?" I was totally devastated. But it turned out to be basically the best thing that ever happened to me. It's the difference between someone who loves you more than anything in the world giving you criticism and getting it from some bitter stranger on the Internet. What my dad said to me was the kind of criticism where I was like, "Oh, my God, I'm on the wrong track." I'm so grateful to him for doing that. He was such a no-nonsense guy in that sense."

SB: "When I was a teenager, somebody said that to me. I hope nobody says that to me ever again."

GOOP: "They won't because you're past 40, and by 40, all women are amazing."

SB: "The deal is sealed."

GOOP: "And if you're an asshole at that point, then guess what?"

SB: "It's over."

GOOP: "It's over. If you haven't taken all of life's incredible knocks and disappointments and used them to become a fully integrated, self-expressing person by the time you're 40, then what can I tell you?"

Read the full interview at Harper's Bazaar.