Do we like Gwyneth Paltrow?
Our score: 6 out of 10. Decent record on how she treats people, but Goop's health claims and some recent choices keep this in the middle of the pack.
Paltrow is back on screen after years away: she credits her role in Marty Supreme to a “confluence of events”, including the director, co-star Timothée Chalamet and an empty nest. She has also spent years as the face and boss of Goop. When the agency behind her latest ad introduced her, it called her an Academy Award, Emmy and Golden Globe winner.
The famous legal stoush was the Utah ski-crash trial. A retired optometrist sued her over a 2016 collision, she said he skied into her back, and in 2023 a jury found him 100 per cent at fault and gave her the $1 she had asked for. Her line afterwards: acquiescing to a false claim “compromised my integrity”. Fair enough, that's standing your ground, not bullying.
Goop is where the real arguments sit. In 2018 the company paid $145,000 to settle a suit from California prosecutors over unsupported claims for vaginal eggs and an oil blend; Orange County's DA said people had sold “snake oil for a long time”. Goop called it an honest disagreement. In 2020 NHS England's chief said the brand gave prominence to “quacks, charlatans and cranks”, and Goop replied that it takes product claims seriously.
On the harm check, we found no words from her against LGBTQ+ people, women or migrants. She told Vanity Fair she is “very fascinated” by the Make America Healthy Again movement and said institutions are failing Americans. She also has the glyphosate line on record. On the party front, she said on her own podcast she is “completely an independent”. The Altman dinner drew fire for who the guest was, not for anything she said.
The newest row is the 51 Park ad, a campaign for a luxury development in Herzliya, Israel. Critics such as the Saint Hoax account and an anti-Zionist influencer slammed it during the Gaza war, and her management did not respond to a request for comment. Where you land depends on whether you see a paid property gig or a political statement. We only have her silence to go on.
The good-deeds column is thin in what we could verify. Fans love the comeback and the Goop empire, but the reporting we could open was mostly about controversies. Plenty of people will call her out of touch; nothing we found says she is cruel. She isn't harming anyone on purpose, but the evidence for health claims is a wobble.