Gwyneth Paltrow reflects on motherhood as the ‘inflection point’ that made her step back from acting

Gwyneth Paltrow revealed the real reason she took a step back from acting and pivoted her career towards the wellness industry with her lifestyle brand, Goop.

The mom of two joined model Hailey Bieber in a makeshift bathroom for the latest episode of her YouTube talk show series, Who’s In My Bathroom? The pair made mint chocolate chip smoothies together as they discussed Paltrow’s career evolution from Academy Award-winning actress to wellness and lifestyle mogul.

Paltrow – who shares daughter Apple, 18, and son Moses, 16, with ex-husband Chris Martin – explained that it was becoming a mother that made her reassess her career as an actress.

“I really loved the acting part of acting, but the life was a little hard and lonely for me,” the Iron Man star told Bieber. “When I had my daughter, it was a real inflection point in my life where I really reassessed everything and I just thought, I’m not sure that I want to do this full time.”

Paltrow shared that when she took a break from acting, she realised just how much she enjoyed being home and out of the public eye. She then decided to combine her passions for cooking, traveling, and wellness and all of a sudden Goop was born.

“I had always had this real passion for cooking and traveling and wellness, and Goop kind of very slowly evolved out of a desire for me to want to work in that space,” Paltrow said. “It was just like a little newsletter at first and I sent it out and now it’s become a lot bigger over the years.”

Goop was launched in September 2008 when Paltrow sent her first weekly newsletter, featuring recipes for banana nut muffins and turkey ragu, to just 10,000 subscribers. By 2009, the free newsletter had reached around 150,000 subscribers. Soon after, Goop jumped into the e-commerce space with its own branded fashion, vitamins and household goods, and debuted its first skincare line in 2016. Although Goop has often been the subject of controversy with its several vagina-related products, the company is estimated to be worth more than $250m.

While the Goop CEO officially stepped away from acting in 2017, Paltrow admitted earlier this week that she does plan on returning to acting to fulfill a promise to her mother, actor Blythe Danner.

“I really don’t miss it all. I think I’m so lucky that I got to do it, and I’m sure I still will at some point,” she told NBC’s Sunday Today with Willie Geist. “I did promise my mother at some point before I die, I told her I would go and do a play. So I’m gonna deliver on that promise at some point.”