Gwyneth Paltrow is speaking openly and candidly about the process of aging, and how she has learned to embrace her natural beauty after entering her fifties.
In a new interview with Bustle, the 51-year-old Oscar winner revealed that she had initially struggled with the idea of growing older, and even “flipped out” after reaching the age of forty.
However, as time has passed, the Goop founder has grown more comfortable with her changing appearance, and now places less importance on how others view her appearance and physicality.
Gwyneth Paltrow Gets Candid About Life In Her 50s And Loving The Changes Aging Brings
"Fifty was great. I was concerned I was going to feel a lot of grief or fear because I remember when I turned 40, the anticipation… I really flipped out," she recalled.
The Avengers: Endgame actress went on, sharing that her positive outlook on life is inspired by her relationships with her husband, producer Brad Falchuk and children (daughter Apple, 19 and son Moses, 17, whom she shares with ex and Coldplay frontman, Chris Martin).
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"I didn’t have that at all at 50," she added, regarding the idea of freaking out about aging. "I was like, 'I love my friends. I love my husband. I love my kids. Yeah, my job is hard. But this is good,'" Paltrow said.
The wellness mogul continued: "It’s like, I don’t give a f—k what anyone says about me, thinks about me, this is who I am. I felt like 50 was a deepening into myself, and, apparently, that just keeps getting better."
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During the interview, Paltrow also looked back and remembered approaching her forties and finding this time to be "so jarring" when she began to notice wrinkles and fine lines developing on her face.
"I think that’s also why turning 40 was so jarring, because that’s when I started to notice crow’s feet and this and that. It’s so interesting to me how until you have that, you somehow think you’re never going to have that," she said.
"You think you’re going to be impervious, and it seems like this whole thing that other people are needlessly worrying about."
Paltrow shared her healthy mindset with fans, and how she learned to not only accept natural effects of aging, like wrinkles, but also how to embrace them and see the beauty in them.
"Then you’re like, 'Oh, my God, my face.' So it’s double-pronged for me. I am constantly in an exercise of embracing where I am and also embracing this painful thing of not being young and beautiful," she admitted.
Paltrow went on: "Sometimes I almost think of it as a person that I’m hugging, like, 'This is supposed to happen. This is okay.'"
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She also shared that spending less time on social media has also helped her with this. "I’m on social media, but I’m really only on Instagram. The things that I follow, that come up for me, are lots of food and, you know, cool functional psychologists and psychiatrists. I end up muting a lot of things," she said.
The Shakespeare in Love alum added: "I don’t know, I find it hard. I wish I could not be on it, but at the same time, you do want to have a sense of what’s going on. Then, of course, I need it for work, and they always make me do these stupid things on it all the time."
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"I had two babies and now, for some reason, at 51, it’s like all the elasticity’s going," the Shallow Hal star shared.
"But if I look at a 28-year-old model on Instagram and think my stomach’s supposed to look like that, I’ll just go into a depression. So I’ve really tried to divorce myself from that comparison."
