Gwyneth Paltrow

Gwyneth Kate Paltrow (play /ˈɡwɪnɨθ ˈpæltroʊ/; born September 27, 1972) is an American actress and singer. She made her acting debut on stage in 1990 and started appearing in films in 1991. After appearing in several films throughout the decade, Paltrow gained early notice for her work in films such as Se7en (1995) and Emma (1996) (in which she played the title role). Following the films, Sliding Doors (1998) and A Perfect Murder (1998), Paltrow garnered worldwide recognition through her performance in Shakespeare in Love (1998), for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress, a Golden Globe Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards, for Outstanding Lead Actress and as a member of the Outstanding Cast.Since then, Paltrow has portrayed supporting as well as lead roles in films such as The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Shallow Hal (2001), and Proof (2005), for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress in Motion Picture Drama. In 2008, she appeared in the highest grossing movie of her career, the superhero film Iron Man (2008), and then reprised her role as Pepper Potts in its sequel, Iron Man 2 (2010). Paltrow also appeared in the television series, Glee, and has been the face of Estée Lauder's Pleasures perfume since 2005. She is married to Chris Martin, the lead vocalist of Coldplay. They have two children together, Apple and Moses.

Paltrow was born in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Blythe Danner, an actress, and Bruce Paltrow, a film and television director and producer. Paltrow's father was of Ashkenazi Russian Jewish descent; her mother is a Quaker of Pennsylvania Dutch and more distant white Barbadian ancestry.'s paternal great-great-grandfather, whose surname was "Paltrowicz", was a rabbi in Nowogród, Poland. Paltrow has a younger brother, Jake Paltrow, and is a half-cousin of actress Katherine Moennig, and a second cousin of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (AZ-08).Paltrow was raised in Santa Monica, where she attended Crossroads School, before moving and enrolling in The Spence School, a private girls' school in New York City. Later, she briefly studied art history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before dropping out to act. She is an "adopted daughter" of Talavera de la Reina (Spain), where at 15 she spent a year as an exchange student and learned to speak Spanish.After spending several summers watching her mother perform at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts, Paltrow made her professional stage debut there in 1990. Her film debut followed next year with Shout (1991), starring John Travolta, she was cast by Steven Spielberg in his film, Hook (1991), as the young Wendy Darling. Paltrow then had minor roles in Malice (1993) and Flesh and Bone (1993). She was next cast in a supporting role in Se7en (1995) alongside Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, which earned her a Satellite Award nomination. In 1996, she played the title character in Emma to critical acclaim.