Actress Gwyneth Paltrow has opened up how it felt to lose her sense of “purpose and orientation” after she became an empty nester, while revealing how this process helped her to bring her “Marty Supreme” character to life.
Paltrow, 53, stars alongside A-list sensation Timothee Chalamet in the Josh Safdie-directed project, playing Kay Stone, a retired actress who makes the decision to return to the stage after years without work.
While taking part in a recent Q&A about her new movie with fellow actress Demi Moore, Paltrow admitted that there are many comparisons to be drawn between herself and her character.
After taking a lengthy break from acting, during which she focused her attention on raising her family and expanding her Goop lifestyle brand, the Oscar winner says she was inspired to return to the big screen for the first time in years after both of her kids, Apple, 21, and Moses, 19, left for college.
“My kids went off to college, and I had this big vacancy in my purpose and orientation,” she admitted. “And then this guy, Josh Safdie, called me and I was so embarrassingly out of the [loop]. I had never even seen Timothee Chalamet in a movie, which is … I swear, now I have.
“But I felt for Kay so much and her loss and her … I don’t know, there was something so tragic about her and sort of cold. And then she makes this choice to go back. Anyway, of course, there was the meta thing of her unquitting, which I was doing.”
But Paltrow, who lives primarily in Montecito but also owns a sprawling mansion in the Hamptons, has no intention of returning to the same schedule she was bound to before she welcomed her kids with ex-husband, Chris Martin.
She said that her children’s departure from the family home gave her pause—while the process of shooting “Marty Supreme” provided an opportunity to look back and think about how hectic her life had been when she was at the height of her movie fame, something she cannot believe she managed to maintain for so many years.
“I kind of really stepped back in a meaningful way,” she shared. “I mean, I was looking back at this and through the process of talking about this movie, I kind of looked back and [have] been asked questions about it, and realized I did such an insane number of films before I had my kids.
“Some years, I was doing four movies a year, five movies a year. I think I kind of didn’t give myself permission to take my time and be strategic.”
“I was just on this train and going and going and when I had my daughter, I really wanted to stop.”
Paltrow took a significant step back from the spotlight after giving birth to Apple, and while she has since opted to take part in a handful of projects—two of which, “Glee” and “The Politician,” have been at the behest of her second husband, Brad Falchuk—she has no desire to go back to the way things were before she became a mother.
“I stopped for three years completely and since then have sometimes dipped my toe,” she said. “But I kind of wanted to not be in some far-flung location. I was a single mom.”
Another thing that has changed dramatically in her career is her kids’ ability to actually engage with her movies, which she admits was somewhat mortifying for son Moses when he watched “Marty Supreme” for the first time and saw his mother taking part in sex scenes with co-star Chalamet, who is 23 years her junior.
“Oh my God, my poor son!” she joked of the intimate on-screen moments. “Can you imagine when he came to the premiere in L.A.? He wanted to die.”
In addition to returning to the big screen, Paltrow also made another major move in her life after her kids headed off to college: selling her longtime Brentwood mansion, which she bought with Martin and where she raised her children, in order to relocate to a custom-built estate in Montecito.
Paltrow, 52, originally purchased the property with her former spouse for $9.95 million back in 2012, less than two years before the duo “consciously uncoupled” and ended their marriage.
The Goop founder held onto the picture-perfect, eight-bedroom, 11-bathroom abode following their divorce and retained the home even after she wed her Falchuk in 2018.
However, in January 2025, she finally offloaded the property for $22 million—a discount from the original $29.9 million asking price—telling the Wall Street Journal at the time that she made the decision for a number of reasons—including her status as an empty nester.
The Oscar winner’s youngest child, Moses had graduated from high school months earlier, in May 2024, and soon after began attending Brown University, while her daughter, Apple, is currently completing her final year at Vanderbilt University.
Paltrow admitted in October 2024 that she was suffering from “waves of grief and sadness” after watching her children fly the best, but added in a Q&A posted to her Instagram Stories that she was trying to see the positives in having more freedom.
“I am kind of getting back in touch with this part of myself that I haven’t felt like since I was in my 20s before I had kids,” she said.
“Like, a little more space and imagination, maybe. A little more inner space for what I might want to do that day, stuff like that.”
As for Paltrow, she has since moved into a new nest where she has embarked on the next chapter of her life: a stunning custom-built Montecito mansion that was completed not long before her Brentwood mansion sold.
The “Shakespeare In Love” star opened up about that home while showcasing its beautiful design in a 2022 Architectural Digest shoot, explaining at the time that she had formed a love of the area while spending two semesters studying at UC Santa Barbara.
“I’ve always gravitated toward Santa Barbara. Even when I was living in London, we’d take the kids there for holidays. It was our sweet gem of an escape in the U.S.,” she explained.
Paltrow began scouting for homes in the area in 2015, just one year after she split from Coldplay frontman Martin, and found a “teardown with tons of potential,” which she quickly “fell in love with.”
“It was like ‘Grey Gardens,'” she said. “There were wild animals living there and swarms of bugs, but I fell in love with the land and the views.”
According to records, Paltrow and Falchuk paid $4.9 million for the property in 2016—and quickly proceeded to raze the existing home to the ground, making way for a sprawling “eco-friendly mansion” that took around seven years to complete.
The actress worked with Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch of Roman and Williams on the design of the property, having previously enlisted the duo to outfit her New York City apartment as well as Goop’s first-ever pop-up shop.
Paltrow described the aesthetic of her home as “a Parisian apartment set within an old European barn” in her AD interview; however, she also called attention to the many environmentally friendly aspects of its design, including its solar power system and its gray-water system.