Gwyneth Paltrow - Early Life

Early Life

Paltrow was born in Los Angeles, California. She is the daughter of actress Blythe Danner and the late film producer/director Bruce Paltrow. Her father was Jewish (of Belarusian Ashkenazi origin), and her mother is a Quaker of Pennsylvania Dutch and more distant white Barbadian ancestry. Paltrow's paternal great-great-grandfather, whose surname was "Paltrowicz," was a rabbi in Nowogród, Poland. Paltrow has a younger brother, Jake Paltrow, and is a half-cousin of actress Katherine Moennig, and a second cousin of former U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (AZ-08).

Paltrow was raised in Santa Monica, where she attended Crossroads School, before enrolling in The Spence School, a private girls' school in New York City. Later, she briefly studied anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before dropping out to act. She is an "adopted daughter" of Talavera de la Reina (Spain), where at 15 she spent a year as an exchange student and learned to speak Spanish.

Read more about this topic:  Gwyneth Paltrow

Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:

    “next to of course god america i
    love you land of the pilgrims” and so forth oh
    say can you see by the dawn’s early my
    country ‘tis of centuries come and go
    and are no more what of it we should worry
    in every language even deafanddumb
    thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
    by jing by gee by gosh by gum
    —E.E. (Edward Estlin)

    While you here do snoring lie,
    Open-eyed conspiracy
    His time doth take.
    If of life you keep a care,
    Shake off slumber, and beware.
    Awake, Awake!
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)