Gwyneth Paltrow

Gwyneth Paltrow (born Gwyneth Kate Paltrow; September 27, 1972) is an American actress, singer, and food writer. She made her acting debut on stage in 1990 and started appearing in films in 1991. After appearing in several films throughout the decade, Paltrow gained early notice for her work in films such as Seven (1995) and Emma (1996) (in which she played the title role). Following the films Sliding Doors (1998) and A Perfect Murder (1998), Paltrow garnered worldwide recognition through her performance in Shakespeare in Love (1998), for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress, a Golden Globe Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards, for Outstanding Lead Actress and as a member of the Outstanding Cast. She also won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in 2011 for her role as Holly Holliday on the Fox hit TV show Glee in the episode "The Substitute". In April 2013, Gwyneth was named "Most Beautiful Woman" by People Magazine.

Paltrow has portrayed supporting as well as lead roles in films such as The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Shallow Hal (2001), and Proof (2005), for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress in Motion Picture Drama. Since 2008 she has portrayed Pepper Potts, the love interest of Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in Iron Man (2008), Iron Man 2 (2010), The Avengers (2012), and Iron Man 3 (2013). Paltrow has been the face of Estée Lauder's Pleasures perfume since 2005.

She is married to Chris Martin, the lead vocalist of Coldplay. They have two children together, Apple and Moses. She is also the face of American fashion brand Coach, owner of the lifestyle company Goop.com and author of two cookbooks: My Father's Daughter: Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family & Togetherness, and It's All Good.
Paltrow was born in Los Angeles, California, and is the daughter of actress Blythe Danner and the late film producer/director Bruce Paltrow. Her father was Jewish and her mother is from a Christian background, and Paltrow was raised with "both Jewish and Christian holidays". Her father's Ashkenazi family immigrated from Belarus and Poland, while her mother's ancestry is Pennsylvania Dutch and white Barbadian. Paltrow's paternal great-great-grandfather, whose surname was "Paltrowicz," was a rabbi in Nowogród, Poland. Paltrow has a younger brother, Jake Paltrow, and is a half-cousin of actress Katherine Moennig, and a second cousin of former U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (AZ-08).

Paltrow was raised in Santa Monica, where she attended Crossroads School, before enrolling in the Spence School, a private girls' school in New York City. Later, she briefly studied anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before dropping out to act. She is an "adopted daughter" of Talavera de la Reina (Spain), where at 15 she spent a year as an exchange student and learned to speak Spanish.

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