Yes, Gwyneth Really Can Smoke Just a Few Cigarettes a Year

And more from Taffy Brodesser-Akner's in-depth article on the actress and her business
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 26, 2018 11:50 AM CDT
Why Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop Is Hiring a Fact-Checker
In this June 10, 2017, photo provided by Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow stands for a photo at the In Goop Health summit in Culver City, Calif.   (BFA via AP)

Somewhere in the middle of her New York Times Magazine article on Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop, the controversial lifestyle business she founded, writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner sits in the actress's home and smokes a cigarette with her because she once read that Paltrow smokes a single cigarette a week. The truth is that she smokes just a few times a year, Paltrow tells Brodesser-Akner. When they see each other again in June, Paltrow hasn't smoked since that February cigarette, whereas Brodesser-Akner, who had given up smoking 10 years prior to that cigarette, has taken up the habit again. This, Brodesser-Akner explains in her long profile, is why people hate Paltrow: because she can smoke a single cigarette without becoming addicted, an ability she aspired to and cultivated after reading that Michio Kushi, the father of macrobiotics, did the same. Paltrow doesn't understand why that so irritates some onlookers: "Because I have discipline?"

The article features Brodesser-Akner veering between apparent mystification at Goop—in one part, the writer describes a Goop-endorsed product that "supposedly creates free radicals something something from the body's cells"—and awe at the lifestyle of Paltrow, whom she calls "G.P." throughout, just as G.P.'s pals do: Her beautiful children shake hands gracefully and willingly practice their music with their dad, G.P.'s ex Chris Martin, who casually swings by Paltrow's place while her fiance, Brad Falchuk, is also there. Brodesser-Akner charts Goop's rise and its issues—thanks to much uproar over some of its more out-there health claims, it will soon be hiring a full-time fact checker—but also recounts how she cried after a conversation with Paltrow about regretting not having a third child. Read the full article for more, including Paltrow describing her relationship with Harvey Weinstein and Brodesser-Akner's ultimate conclusion after attending the In Goop Health summit. (More Gwyneth Paltrow stories.)

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