Gwyneth Paltrow doesn’t have any “bad blood” with her exes.
In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, the Goop founder opened up about remaining friends with her exes, including Brad Pitt, who she dated from 1994 to 1997.
“One of them is still one of my best friends — one from high school, Tony Woods,” Paltrow said of a past relationship, adding, “And I’m friendly with Brad Pitt. I don’t have any really bad blood.”
After her relationship with Pitt, the actress went on to date Ben Affleck, whom she dated until 2000. In 2003, Paltrow married Coldplay singer Chris Martin. The former couple — who share daughter Apple, 15, and son Moses, 13 — famously announced they were “consciously uncoupling” after ten years of marriage when they split in 2014.
Like many of her exes, Paltrow has remained close friends with Martin and had nothing but good things to say about his girlfriend, Dakota Johnson.
“It’s not like there’s a finish line: ‘Oh, we consciously uncoupled; we’re done.’ It’s a lifelong commitment to constantly reinvent your relationship with your ex, which you do presumably because you have children together,” she explained. “I don’t see a reason to do it if you don’t have children together. Some people do. But I think we put all the hard work in at the beginning. I would say very rarely is it difficult now. We’ve learned how to communicate with each other. We love each other. We laugh. We have the best of each other. It’s really nice. It makes you feel like you don’t have to lose.”
When it comes to Johnson, Paltrow expressed how she understands why people might find it weird that she’s close to her ex-husband’s girlfriend. “I love her. I can see how it would seem weird because it’s sort of unconventional,” she said. But I think, in this case, just having passed through it iteratively, I just adore her.”
“I always start to think of the ampersand sign — what else can you bring in, instead of being resistant to or being made insecure by?” she added. “There’s so much juice in leaning in to something like that.”
Many found it bizarre when Martin, Johnson, Paltrow and her husband, Brad Falchuk, all vacationed together in the Hamptons last summer. Paltrow continued to make headlines for her untraditional relationships when she revealed she and Falchuck weren’t living together full-time after they tied the knot in September 2018. The pair didn’t move in together until nearly a year later.
“So our sex life is over,” Paltrow joked of her living situation now. “I thought it was really interesting how resonant that was for people. One of my best friends was like, ‘That is my dream. Don’t ever move in.’ I think it certainly helps with preserving mystery and also preserving the idea that this person has their own life. So this is something I’m trying to remain aware of now as we merge together.”
The February 2020 issue of Harper’s Bazaar hits newsstands January 21.
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