Gwyneth Paltrow is just like Us in at least one respect: she has complicated feelings about an ex — and, in her case, that ex is Brad Pitt.
Paltrow, now 52, and Pitt, now 61, began dating after working together on David Fincher‘s horror classic Se7en in 1994, got engaged in 1996 and split in 1997. As revealed in Amy Odell‘s upcoming Gwyneth: The Biography, Paltrow, had a mournful reaction to Pitt’s 1999 much-covered wedding to fellow A-lister Jennifer Aniston — not that she shared it with the public.
As Odell writes, Paltrow got snappy during a September 2000 interview at the Toronto Film Festival premiere of Duets (starring Gwyneth and directed by her later father, Bruce Paltrow), calling a reporter “very gossipy” for a question about another ex, Ben Affleck. Things didn’t improve from there, as revealed in this book excerpt exclusive to Us Weekly:
The reporter then asked how she felt about Brad Pitt marrying Jennifer Aniston [in July of that year]. “Are you really asking me this question?” Gwyneth replied, her eyes now “daggers.” “I can’t comment on this kind of thing.” In reality, Gwyneth confided to friends that she’d felt sad when she learned they were getting married. (She was also fond of telling them that Brad “has terrible taste in women.”)
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As most readers of Us likely recall, Pitt and Aniston got engaged in November 1999 and wed in Malibu on July 29, 2000 — ultimately divorcing five years later, in October 2005, as Pitt’s romance with his Mr. and Mrs. Smith costar Angelina Jolie heated up.
That same year, during a business meeting with Aerin Lauder — a fellow Manhattan socialite and part of the Estee Lauder cosmetics dynasty which would sign Paltrow as the face of its Pleasures fragrance — she couldn’t resist taking a shot, Odell writes:
At one dinner, the two were talking about Brad Pitt. According to someone familiar with the discussion, Gwyneth allegedly told her, “He’s dumber than a sack of s–t.”
“He was brought up very religious, in Missouri,” Odell told People of the stark contrast between Paltrow and Pitt. “It’s just a very different world from hers, growing up in Manhattan, going to [elite private school] Spence, I think she thought he wasn’t sophisticated enough for her. She thought she was smarter, better educated, more sophisticated.”
Regardless, Pitt had the stamp of approval from Paltrow’s family. “Her dad [Bruce Paltrow] loved Brad,” Odell told People. “Her friends loved Brad. They thought he was the nicest guy.”
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In a 2023 appearance on “Call Her Daddy,” Paltrow said she was “totally heartbroken” after their 1997 split.
“It was the right thing at that time, but it was really hard,” Paltrow explained. “There were a number of things that had happened, he was nine years older than me — he knew what he wanted, he was ready to do it and I was kind of all over the place.”
Paltrow eventually wed Coldplay’s Chris Martin in 2003, and they welcomed kids Apple and Moses. Following their famous conscious uncoupling (read: divorce) in 2016, Paltrow finally found her Brad: TV writer and producer Brad Falchuk, her husband since 2018.
Gwyneth: The Biography will be released on July 29 and is available for pre-order now.
