Why Gwyneth Paltrow Really Decided to Put Acting on the Back Burner

Gwyneth Paltrow's endgame in Hollywood is coming into focus.

The Oscar winner—who recently shared her plans to "disappear" from the public eye in a few years—explained why she first decided to put her acting career on the back burner 20 years ago in order to focus on her family and build her wellness company Goop.

"Women have very different chapters in their lives," Paltrow told E! News' Justin Sylvester during a good.clean.goop event on Oct. 18. "We should feel free to lean in to whatever incarnation comes with the next chapter."

For the Iron Man actress, her career goals changed after she and then-husband Chris Martin welcomed daughter Apple Martin in 2004.

"Once I had Apple, I didn't want to fly off and go on location. I wanted to come home," Paltrow shared. "And I was really lucky that I was able to do that and take this. Pause to be home and have my little kids."

The Shakespeare in Love star, who welcomed son Moses Martin with the Coldplay frontman in 2006, recalled having a "voice inside of me" that told her, "I don't know if I really want to go back to doing that."

"That gave me a bit of a crisis, like, 'What does that mean about me? Who am I if I'm not Gwyneth Paltrow? Am I worth anything?'" the 51-year-old remembered. "It was very confusing."

While she soon felt her creative juices flowing again, she didn't want to go back to movie sets.

"I wasn't sitting there daydreaming, like, 'Oh, I wish I could go do this movie or that,'" she shared. "I want to do something where I have agency and I would love to do something in the digital space."

Two years after welcoming her son, Paltrow decided to "completely jump ship" and launched Goop as a newsletter sent from her kitchen with the hope of eventually having "some way to make money." Within a decade, her business was valued at $250 million, a source close to the company told The New York Times in 2018. 

And she was still able to partake in the occasional big movie or TV project as well, including Avengers and The Politician.

However, it will soon be time for her to jump ship once again, as she revealed her plans to sell Goop, potentially as soon as her 55th birthday in 2027.

"We're not ready to sell yet. I need a few more years," she told Bustle in an Oct. 18 cover story. But when the time comes, she noted, "I will literally disappear from public life. No one will ever see me again." 

To look back on photos of her life in the public eye, read on: