Gwyneth Paltrow On Doing It All: “I’m A big Fan Of The Ampersand”

Gwyneth Paltrow a poster girl for doing it all: as if being a mother, successful actress and maintaining an amicable divorce isn't enough, she also makes time to maintain a stringent diet and err sell rap-inspired clutches. It's enough to make you feel pretty inadequete. But now Gwynny has revealed the secret to her balancing act, well, the symbol that represents it, at least. "I’m a big believer in the ampersand," she tells Fast Company magazine in her cover interview.

Confused? Let her elaborate: "I don’t see it as I’m leaving something behind. I see it as this year, I probably won’t make a movie, or I probably won’t do a TV show or a play, and I’ll focus on the business. It’s our tendency to want to put women in one little category."

But, even Gwyneth is impressed with how Gwyneth has kept her cool in the past while juggling professional and personal challenges. "My future self is always afraid when I look back," she says. "I had this the other day where somebody was asking me about [the movie Emma], which I did in England when I was 22. It was really my first starring role, an adaptation of Jane Austin's Emma. And I remember at the time people saying, 'Weren’t you intimidated to play this English heroine? You’re this American girl.' When I think about it [now], I would be petrified."

And her starring role in the Jane Austen adaptation isn't the only seminal moment Gwyneth reflects on - she also broaches her famous divorce announcement and admits, and admits she wasn't the one behind its even more famous title. "When I announced that I was separating on the website, [Goop editorial director Elise Loehnen] titled the piece 'Conscious Uncoupling,' and I had no idea." Well, she's certainly owned the term since.