Gwyneth Paltrow is opening up about what it feels like to live with a version of herself that doesn’t always match who she really is.
The Oscar-winning actress and Goop founder, 52, admitted in a new teaser clip for her upcoming appearance on The Cutting Room Floor podcast that she has often felt misunderstood.
“No one will understand me until I’m dead,” she said.
The actress, who first rose to fame in the 1990s, explained that she has long been aware of the public narrative surrounding her, though she doesn’t fully understand how it came to be.
“I have never created my own narrative. I’m aware that that exists,” she said. “But I have had a really strange life in this respect. Like, imagine being an actual person and know that people are characterizing you in a way and you can’t understand how they arrived at that narrative. I have no idea who people are talking about.”
Paltrow described this public image as an “avatar” projected onto her for decades. While she recognizes why certain ideas stick, she feels they are “tropey” and “reductive,” reducing her to an easy label rather than a full person.
“We’re all human beings, so it hurts when somebody willfully misrepresents you or misperceives you,” she continued.
“You want to say, ‘But this is not true,’ or, ‘I never said that,’ but lately I’ve been really trying to almost meditate on this idea of, if you could get to the stage where you could really let go of trying to correct misperception, what could that do?”
She also reflected on how the rise of social media has changed the way celebrities are perceived. Looking back at the 90s, she recalled how mystery was once part of a movie star’s allure, with tabloids filling in the gaps before platforms like Instagram took over.
“Instagram kind of dismantled a lot of that business model,” she explained. “There was this pursuit of images and information to sort of humanize celebrities, and then we segued into this bizarre new media milieu where everybody was putting their life in front.”
For Paltrow, who describes herself as introverted, that shift hasn’t come naturally. She admitted that using Instagram feels “counterintuitive” and uncomfortable, even though she understands its role in marketing.
“It’s not intuitive. It’s very uncomfortable,” she said.
“But I understand from a marketing perspective how valuable that lever is and how, if you’re growing a CPG business, it’s very hard not to be a celebrity who is trying to leverage their celebrity without those channels.”
By sharing her candid perspective, Paltrow is showing a more personal side of her journey, one that highlights the tension between public perception, private reality, and the demands of modern celebrity culture.
