Gwyneth Paltrow recalls having an ‘identity crisis’ when she turned 40: ‘What if I wasn’t sexually desirable?’

Gwyneth Paltrow may be an ageless beauty to her devoted fans, but the Goop founder isn’t immune to the pressures of aging.

On the latest episode of the Goop podcast, Paltrow, 50, explained that while she has a healthier view of aging these days, there was a time when the concept terrified her.

“I had a really hard time turning 40,” she explained to the episode’s guest, husband Brad Falchuk. “I had a flip out from physical aging. I went to this dermatologist in London and got pretty much the worst botox and I panicked.”

Paltrow, who recently celebrated her 50th birthday in a stunning nude photoshoot that saw her painted in gold, noted that much of that fear was fueled by the pressure she faced in Hollywood after years of being a sought-after naïve was.

“If you [are] It’s considered an attractive woman in the culture and you do your whole career with that, in a way I obviously think I had talent and I could contribute something to the acting profession, but I was also very objectified. said the Oscar winner. “You get roles because people find you attractive, right? At least my kind of parts.”

“I wasn’t cast for the character actor roles. I was a leading lady so I guess it was just a bit of an identity crisis when I found out what if I wasn’t sexually desirable? What did that do to me? if I wasn’t just as pretty?” She continued. “You go from stopping traffic to having a guy who doesn’t look at you when you drive by.”

The actress went on to say that while it was a “very intense time,” thankfully she doesn’t feel that pressure now, largely because of the wisdom she’s gained since then.

“I was so self-critical that I always thought something was wrong,” she said, looking back on the past. Since then, she explains, “I’ve started to settle in and recalibrate and just have a different relationship with myself.”

Part of that process is “accepting that my body isn’t the same, or my metabolism isn’t the same, or that I have wrinkles. It’s like a nice adjustment when you start making it more conscious,” she explained. “I think there was a time when I didn’t get used to it and I’ve struggled with it more in recent years, but now I feel better.”

The story goes on

Expanding on the conversation, Paltrow touched on her fears about mortality following the death of her father, director Bruce Paltrow, who died of oral cancer in 2002.

As she explained, her father’s death pushed her to embrace a healthy, active, and positive lifestyle.

“My father was diagnosed with stage four cancer when he was only 54 years old. I mean, it’s crazy to think about,” she said. “Sure it’s part of why I’ve been so focused on maintaining good health and good basic health… because it’s a little bit scary.”

However, with age comes new discoveries about how to manage such stress and anxiety.

“As you accumulate more years, you just realize that actually everything will be fine – even if it isn’t [now], it is, and you’ll be fine,” she said. So things you absolutely knew were the end of the world, you woke up the next morning and you got through it, and then [there’s] Another Problem.”

“In a way, I just understand that everything’s going to be okay,” she says. “And then you have a slightly different relationship with the stress and with the things and the emotions because you know that emotions will blow through you, that eventually the stress will resolve itself.”

In fact, Paltrow is entering this era of her life with gratitude.

While reflecting on her life in a recent Goop post, the actress explained that she’s finally in a place where she sees the beauty in her “saggy skin” and “wrinkles.”

She wrote that she now finds joy in the “evidence map” of a life truly lived.

“A collection of marks and irregularities that dog-eared the chapters. Scars from furnace fires, a finger smashed in a window long ago, the birth of a child,” she said. “Silver hair and fine lines. The sun left its heavenly fingerprints all over me, as if it had dipped a brush in dark taupe and sprinkled it on my skin.”

“As I do what I can to strive for good health and long life, ward off weakening muscles and receding bones, I have a mantra to inject into those reckless thoughts that try to derail me: I accept,” she said. “I accept the spots and the peeling skin, the wrinkles. I accept my body and let go of the need to be perfect, to look perfect, to defy gravity, to defy logic, to defy humanity. I accept my humanity.”

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