Gwyneth Paltrow explains how father's cancer battle led to Goop launch: 'We had to be able to do something else to help'

Gwyneth Paltrow has revealed how her father’s years-long battle with throat cancer and his subsequent death motivated her to learn more about wellness and ultimately launch Goop.

Speaking with Town & Country for the magazine’s cover story, Paltrow recalled her father Bruce Paltrow’s “brutal” cancer treatment, which began when he was diagnosed in 1999, and how the experience inspired her to search for other treatment options, leading her on a journey to health and wellness.

“His treatment was so brutal, I was thinking, almost out of desperation, that we had to be able to do something else to help him,” the actress said. “That’s when I started to research food and nutrition."

According to Paltrow, who started the wellness company in 2008 as a newsletter - six years after her dad’s death - Goop has since grown and evolved into an outlet she can use to “impact the world positively”.

Explaining that she believes “being alive is a process of figuring out how you can impact the world positively,” which she says is possible as long as you’re not “wasting your f***ing life,” Paltrow said: “You can choose to engage in your life and participate in it, or you can back out and criticise everybody else in your arena.”

And despite the brand’s history of making questionable and potentially dangerous claims to sell products, such as vaginal eggs and vaginal steamers, the 47-year-old says she’s “on the right side of this” when it comes to the wellness market.

“I’m watching the market. I’m watching what’s happening,” the Avengers actress explained, adding: “I think what this wellness movement is really about is listening to yourself, tuning into what interests you, and trying things. Find what makes you feel better and go from there.”

This is not the first time the Goop founder has opened up about the impact and influence her father had on her life. During an appearance on The Graham Norton Show in June 2019, Paltrow revealed that she’d started to let fame get to her head after winning her first Oscar at 26 for her role in Shakespeare in Love - at which point her father had stepped in.

“He said, in his inimitable Brooklyn way: 'Um, you're kind of turning into an a**,'” she recalled, adding that her dad’s intervention was an "incredibly important moment in her life" as it made her realise that fame can actually be “really dangerous”.