Gwyneth Paltrow experiencing ‘grief and sadness’ as kids with Chris Martin move out

Gwyneth Paltrow says she’s having a difficult time transitioning away from being in full-time mom mode.

The actress turned entrepreneur sent her youngest child with her ex-husband, Coldplay rocker Chris Martin, off to college this fall.

As part of an Instagram Q&A with followers, Paltrow spoke about being an empty nester, calling the experience “very different” than what she’s been accustomed to for the last 20 years.

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“I have waves of kind of grief and sadness,” she admitted of her children being out of the home. “And also 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.”

Paltrow started her family with Martin in 2004 with the birth of their daughter, Apple. Paltrow was pregnant at the time of their 2003 Santa Barbara Courthouse wedding. They welcomed their son, Moses, in 2006, and divorced in 2016.

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“I have waves of kind of grief and sadness.”

— Gwyneth Paltrow

“[I have a] little more space and imagination, maybe? [A] little more inner space for like, what I might wanna do that day, and stuff like that. So, it’s evolving. It’s interesting,” she said of the experience. 

Paltrow recorded her responses from New York City, where she’s currently filming the upcoming flick “Marty Supreme” with Timothée Chalamet. 

Paltrow has been “semi-retired” from the acting world for several years, crediting a lack of interest and motherhood as reasons to leave the craft. At 26, Paltrow had already won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Viola de Lesseps in “Shakespeare In Love.” A decade later, she launched her wellness newsletter Goop, which materialized into the burgeoning lifestyle brand it is today.

“I think that when you hit the bull’s-eye when you’re 26 years old and you’re a metrics-driven person who, frankly, doesn’t love acting that much as it turns out… I sort of felt like, ‘Well, now who am I supposed to be? Like, what am I? What am I driving toward?’” she told Bruce Bozzi on his podcast in 2020.

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“Part of the shine of acting wore off, you know, being in such intense public scrutiny, being a kid who’s like living every breakup on every headline, like being criticized for everything you do, say and wear,” Paltrow explained. “It’s so transitory. You’re always all over. It’s hard to plant roots. I’m such a homebody.”

“If you compound those things with the fact that like, you know, to be totally candid, I had a really rough boss for most of my movie career at Miramax,” she said, referencing disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein, “You’re like, ‘I don’t know if this is really my calling.’ So I’m still trying to parse out what came from what and… how my life changed course.”

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But Paltrow also wanted to focus on being a mother. 

“I really stepped away from acting when Apple was born,” Paltrow told People in 2023. “The last time I was in every scene of a movie was when I was pregnant with her,” she admitted. “When I had her, it just, everything felt redefined for me, and I thought, ‘I’m not sure that I want to do this so much as a career. I definitely don’t want to … I’m not going to go away for months on end.'”

Both Apple and Moses are now in college – Vanderbilt University and Brown University, respectively. Paltrow’s husband, Brad Falchuk, sent his youngest child off to college this fall, too.