Gwyneth Paltrow revealed Wednesday on Howard Stern’s radio show who the true love of her life was – and it’s probably not who you’re thinking.
“He was kind of the love of my life,” she said of beloved father Bruce Paltrow, who died at age 58 from pneumonia while celebrating Gwyneth’s 30th birthday in Italy in 2002. “I’ll never forget, you know, when he died and everybody was so nice, you know, people, anyone who met him loved him and knew our relationship and I remember somebody wrote me an email saying, ‘You know, everybody has a father, but not everybody has a daddy.’ And that’s what he was. He was the best.”
Bruce had previously battled throat cancer.
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Many other famous men have captured Gwyneth’s heart over the years and her father’s approval was always very important to her.
“I definitely fell in love with [Brad Pitt]. He was so gorgeous and sweet. I mean, he was Brad Pitt!” she said of her ex-fiancee, who she split from in June 1997. “My father was so devastated when we broke up. My father loved him like a son.”
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Ben Affleck — who Gwyneth dated from 1997 to 2000 — also landed on Gwyneth’s impressive dating resume.
“I think [my parents] appreciated how he’s super intelligent and he’s really, really talented and he’s funny, but he wasn’t in a good place in his life to have a girlfriend, so I think they were okay with [us breaking up],” she explained. “Brad, my father, honestly was so sad.”
Gwyneth’s left the past in the past and considers Ben’s wife Jennifer Garner a friend.
“Not only is she beautiful, she’s so warm and she cooks and is like so into her kids. She’s really great and she’s hilarious,” Gwyneth praised Jennifer. “I had a girls’ dinner before the summer and she came over. She’s my neighbor. I really like her a lot.”
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Of course, Gwyneth found herself a husband in rockstar Chris Martin soon after her dad’s passing.
“I really loved his music before I met him,” she told Howard Stern on his SiriusXM show. “And when my dad was sick and dying, his second album I had on repeat all the time.”
As fate would have it, the two met as Gwyneth was still mourning the loss of her father and the rest is history. But, in March 2014, the two “consciously uncoupled.” She explained the philosophy behind the “goofy term.”
“First of all, when I sent out the thing I made a mistake in that I didn’t give it context,” she said of her Goop post. “Like I didn’t say, ‘This is a psychology from this, I mean a philosophy, from this woman. This is not my term and we’re following this thing,’ which I think is incredible…It’s a very noble idea and it’s a great thing I think to try to do for your kids.”
Gwyneth and Chris are actively co-parenting their two children, daughter Apple and son Moses.
“We’re lucky in that our parenting styles and philosophies overlap a lot,” she said. “We see eye-to-eye on how to do it.”
But is Gwyneth concerned about who her ex chooses to date?
“I respect him as the father of my children and…it’s his life and it’s his decision and I do think that he loves the kids so much and I don’t think that he would be with someone that wasn’t great,” she responded.
— Paige Feigenbaum
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