Gwyneth Paltrow

As the daughter of the late director Bruce Paltrow and actress Blythe Danner — and the goddaughter of Steven Spielberg — a career in the arts came naturally to Gwyneth Paltrow. Her connections in Hollywood got her one of her first film roles as Wendy in the 1991 Peter Pan update Hook.

She was able to quickly become leading-lady material, starring in Se7en (1995), Emma (1996) and 1998’s Shakespeare In Love, for which she earned an Oscar for Best Actress. She went on to star in The Talented Mr. Ripley in 1999 and tried her hand at comedy in 2001’s Shallow Hal.

Gwyneth saw a new resurgence in her career when she entered the Marvel Cinematic Universe with 2008’s Iron Man, reprising her role as Tony Stark’s love interest Pepper Potts in several more Marvel films, including 2012’s The Avengers. For her guest-starring role in the TV show Glee, Gwyneth earned a Primetime Emmy Award.

The actress has dated several of her costars, including Ben Affleck, Luke Wilson and Brad Pitt, to whom she was engaged in 1996. Following her 1997 split from Pitt, Gwyneth married Coldplay frontman Chris Martin in 2003. They welcomed two children — daughter Apple in May 2004 and son Moses in April 2006 — before announcing their “conscious uncoupling” in 2014. The exes finalized their divorce in 2016.

After meeting Glee co-creator Brad Falchuk on the set of the show, the pair quietly began dating in 2014 before getting engaged in 2017 and tying the knot in 2018. In 2017, Paltrow announced she was taking a break from acting to focus on her lifestyle brand, Goop.