Gwyneth Paltrow possibly has as many fans as she has detractors, but however you feel about the Goop founder, you can't deny she has no problem being beautifully honest in interviews.
Proving this in a chat with Vogue on the occasion of her 50th birthday last year (she turned 51 on Wednesday this week), Paltrow got candid about her experience of aging in Hollywood, and owning her wrinkles as a marker of her rich life experiences.
During this interview, the actress was asked about what she's shared in the past re: feeling better about herself as she ages, despite moving away from the societal ideals of beauty.
"Because in our Western capitalistic culture, we have conflated youth and beauty and we have very little outside of that margin to explore," she explained.
"Maybe it’s because I have wrinkles and I’m almost 50 years old, but I’ve really recalibrated the way that I look at that stuff.
"I don’t relate to a 26-year-old model. I don’t want her life. I don’t want her face. I don’t want her experience. I’ve earned my life. I’ve earned my wrinkles. I have been through so many highs and lows, and there’s a sweetness that starts to emerge from that, from having lived, from being wise, from being humble, from loving and losing and all of this stuff."
The interviewer was partially referencing a podcast interview Paltrow gave in 2019, in which she addressed her growing self-love in parallel to her new insecurities about the outward signs of aging.
"I think you get to a point where it’s almost like your sort of pulchritude is waning in a way and your inner beauty is, like, really coming out, and so it’s this funny shift that’s happening," she said at the time.
Elsewhere in the Vogue interview, Paltrow also reflected on how happy she is that she's not in her twenties anymore—while also holding the knowledge that she had an active role in shaping the cultural landscape of the '90s and 2000s via her fashion choices as well as iconic roles in the likes of The Royal Tenenbaums and Shakespeare in Love, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress.
"I think as human beings, we all want to feel that we’ve left a mark in some way," she said. "And so I guess that’s proof on some level or empirical proof that I did make a contribution. But I would never want to go back and be that person. I’m so happy with wrinkles and my life."
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