Gwyneth Paltrow has certainly seen a lot during her decades-long career, and recently, she opened up about one of the hardest things she’s ever experienced in a viral interview.
The Goop founder was recently a guest on the Awards Chatter podcast from The Hollywood Reporter, where, while discussing a variety of topics, she spoke about her father, Bruce Paltrow’s, death in 2002. She opened up about her grief journey and even admitted to having a ‘heart attack scare’ as she processed his loss. Her real and candid discussion of losing a parent quickly went viral as she became more relatable to many social media users. Read more about what she had to say below.
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Gwyneth Paltrow Describes When She Found Out About Her Father's Death In 2002
The entertainment industry has seen Gwyneth Paltrow grow up over the last thirty years, stepping into her breakout film roles in her early 20s, to finding her later-in-life niche as an iconic lifestyle guru. Throughout her career, especially her earlier years, her parents have been an influence in her life, with her mother being a fellow renowned actress, Blythe Danner, and her father, director Bruce Paltrow, whose death shaped the rest of her life.
While speaking about her role in the award-winning film sweeping the nation, Marty Supreme, on the Awards Chatter podcast earlier this month, she began talking about her earlier acting roles and how her father's sudden death impacted the rest of her life in the spotlight. He reportedly passed away in 2002 while celebrating his daughter's 30th birthday in Rome.
"I felt like I was going to die of grief," she said on the podcast. "There was one night when I woke up, and I thought I was having a heart attack in London. And the only reason I didn't call an ambulance was 'cause I didn't know it's 999, not 911. I was so racked with grief."
Gwyneth Describes How The Film 'Sylvia' Helped Her Grieve
Not long after her father's passing, a younger Gwyneth ended up going right back to work, beginning production for the film Sylvia in 2003.
Sylvia is one of the 53-year-old's most famous projects, as she portrayed Sylvia Plath in the biopic, which in itself is considered a tragic film. Still, in her new interview, she noted that the process of filming is what snapped her back into what she was meant to be doing.
"It kind of saved my life," she admitted. "It's really the way that I process through things. It's the way I access the darker parts of myself that I don't like that much, and let them come up and out. It was such a blessing having to get up every day and have somewhere to go. Just to have the structure of the day, so have somewhere to get up and go, and all day long I was just mining it [the grief] and letting it out and letting it out. And listening to Sigur Rós and sobbing and letting it out, and it really saved me."
