Gwyneth Paltrow has a lot going on, and she’s counting down the days until she can stop.
In a new interview with Bustle, the Goop founder talks about embracing her busy life, which sees her balancing a wellness brand, that is expanding to clean skincare, a fashion line and high school and college-aged kids.
Though she is clear about the path her personal life is taking, she hasn’t thought about the idea of Goop going public. But she has thought about her life when she finally decides to sell.
“I have no idea. We’re not ready to sell yet. I need a few more years,” Paltrow reveals to the magazine.
After noting that she would be happy sailing off into the sunset at the age of 55, the Oscar winner says she does have a plan to step out of the public eye.
“I will literally disappear from public life,” she adds. “No one will ever see me again.”
According to Paltrow, this isn’t the right time to fade away, or stop working, as she is in a season of messy. Good messy, but a lot.
“I’m in a phase where I feel like things are just extra, extra messy because I have so much to do,” the 51-year-old admits. “My son and stepson are both seniors in high school, and sometimes I feel like the college process is a full-time job in and of itself. So I’m trying to keep the domestic stuff on track, and we have a lot going on at the company… So I’m just f**king up. I’ve burned three things in the oven this weekend, just stuff like that, where you’re like, ‘What the f**k?'”
She adds, “I should say I’m trying to learn to be more tolerant with myself when I make messes, because I really don’t like it. It’s just one of those seasons. It’s like this fulcrum of life. I thought in my 50s I could downshift for some reason. I don’t really know why I thought that would happen. I was talking to my friend who’s in her 60s, and she’s like, ‘Oh, no. No way. You got 15 more years.’ I was like, ‘Oh, my God.'”
Paltrow, who is mother to Apple, 19, and Moses, 17, says that although she thinks about the perception she has of herself, she doesn’t do anything for other people’s gaze.
“Fifty was great. I was concerned I was going to feel a lot of grief or fear because I remember when I turned 40, the anticipation… I really flipped out,” she reveals about the thing she learned in her new decade.
“I didn’t have that at all at 50. I was like, ‘I love my friends. I love my husband. I love my kids. Yeah, my job is hard. But this is good.’ To your point, it’s like: I don’t give a f**k what anyone says about me, thinks about me, this is who I am. I felt like 50 was a deepening into myself. And, apparently, that just keeps getting better.”
The same lesson is true for her children, whom she shared are navigating the world, amid “nepo-baby” criticism.
“Now there’s this whole nepo baby culture, and judgment that exists around kids of famous people,” she tells the publication.
“She’s really just a student, and she’s been very… She just wants to be a kid and be at school and learn,” she says. “But there’s nothing wrong with doing or wanting to do what your parents do. Nobody rips on a kid who’s like ‘I want to be a doctor like my dad and granddad.’ The truth is if you grow up in a house with a lot of artists and people making art and music, that’s what you know, the same way that if you grow up in a house with law, the discussions around the table are about the nuances of whatever particular law the parents practice. I think it’s kind of an ugly moniker. I just hope that my children always feel free to pursue exactly what they want to do, irrespective of what anybody’s going to think or say.”
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