gwyneth paltrow
Credit: Getty

Gwyneth Paltrow was one of Hollywood’s biggest darlings for the entirety of the 90s and early aughts, but the actress-turned-wellness-guru says she realized very quickly that acting wasn’t her calling in life. 

During an appearance on SiriusXM’s Quarantined with Bruce, Paltrow said that she knows the exact moment that she was over her career choice: right after she accomplished one of the biggest milestones for any actor – winning an Oscar. 

Paltrow revealed that when she won Best Actress for Shakespeare in Love back in 1999, she realized she didn’t “love acting that much as it turns out.”

“I sort of felt like, well, now who am I supposed to be?” she explained. “Like, what am I, what am I driving towards?”

Gwyneth Paltrow
Credit: Getty

The 48-year-old added that “part of the shine of acting wore off” because she was subjected to the “intense public scrutiny” surrounding her love and personal life, something she says is the opposite of who she is as a person. 

“Being a kid who’s like living every breakup on every headline, like being criticized for everything you do say and wear,” she explained. “And also, it’s so transitory, you’re always all over. It’s hard to plant roots. Like I’m such a homebody, you know me, I like to be with my old friends and cook and squeeze my kids. Like I don’t want to be alone in a hotel room in Budapest for six weeks. Like, it’s just not who I am.”

Paltrow, who was one of the first actresses to go on the record about Harvey Weinstein’s sexual offenses toward women in the film industry, also said that working with the convicted sex offender was part of what dulled the experience of being a star. 

“If you compound those things with the fact that like, you know, to be totally candid, I had a really rough boss for most of my movie career at Miramax,” she said of Weinstein. “Like, so you take all those things [and] you’re like, ‘I don’t know if this is really my calling.'”

Of course, since stepping back from the film industry, Paltrow launched the hugely successful wellness brand, Goop, which is reportedly worth an estimated $250 million. Not bad, Gwyn, not bad.