Gwyneth Paltrow Spoke About Her Ex's Girlfriend Dakota Johnson for the First Time

Gwyneth Paltrow is Harper's Bazaar's new cover girl, and she spent a decent portion of her interview talking about exes, including her ex-husband Chris Martin and his current girlfriend Dakota Johnson.

Gwyneth Paltrow and Dakota Johnson
(Image credit: Amy Sussman)

Gwyneth Paltrow is Harper's Bazaar's new cover girl, and she spent a decent portion of her interview talking about exes, including her ex-husband Chris Martin and his current girlfriend Dakota Johnson. Paltrow has a lot of feelings about Johnson, and they're all positive. (She even shared a birthday tribute to Johnson on her own Instagram.) She knows you think that's strange, though.

As she explained, “I love her. I can see how it would seem weird because it’s sort of unconventional. But I think, in this case, just having passed through it iteratively, I just adore her. I always start to think of the ampersand sign—what else can you bring in, instead of being resistant to or being made insecure by? There’s so much juice in leaning in to something like that.”

She also touched on what her and Martin's relationship is like now, five years after she and Martin initially "consciously uncoupled."

“It’s not like there’s a finish line: ‘Oh, we consciously uncoupled; we’re done.’ It’s a lifelong commitment to constantly reinvent your relationship with your ex, which you do presumably because you have children together," Paltrow said. "I don’t see a reason to do it if you don’t have children together. Some people do. But I think we put all the hard work in at the beginning. I would say very rarely is it difficult now. We’ve learned how to communicate with each other. We love each other. We laugh. We have the best of each other. It’s really nice. It makes you feel like you don’t have to lose.”

And for anyone wondering where Paltrow stands with her other ex-boyfriend Brad Pitt, she divulged on that too: "I’m friendly with Brad Pitt. I don’t have any really bad blood [with exes].” The more you know!

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Alyssa Bailey
News and Strategy Editor

Alyssa Bailey is the news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton). She previously held positions at InStyle and Cosmopolitan. When she's not working, she loves running around Central Park, making people take #ootd pics of her, and exploring New York City.