Her larger-than-life sensibility and scale of ambition have led to both admiration and criticism – and she seems to thrive in her own divisiveness. The author of new book Gwyneth: The Biography, tells the BBC what fascinates her about the star.

Gwyneth Paltrow is hardly an enigma. From crystal "healing" eggs to vagina-themed candles, we might feel that we know the actress and businesswoman intimately. And yet, we really only know her through headlines – most recently, she starred in US tech firm Astronomer's "clever PR move". For more than 30 years, through stories about her boyfriends, her "conscious uncoupling" from Chris Martin, crying at the Oscars, narrowly escaping Harvey Weinstein's advances, and in the very public 2023 ski-crash trial, the public has come to both love and loathe her. Now a new book, Gwyneth: The Biography, explores Paltrow's life and divisive public persona.

The woman who admits she "can't possibly pretend to be someone who makes $25,000 a year", and laments that an accident on the slopes she was (wrongly) blamed for caused her to lose a day of skiing, seems to thrive in her own divisiveness. Her acid tongue is usually in her cheek, we have to imagine, when she says these things. It's as if she's winking and nudging in an "if you know, you know" fashion.

"Gwyneth has, to her extraordinary credit, found a way to be even more annoying," the Guardian wrote upon the launch of Goop in 2008. Paltrow's wellness empire catapulted her into a whole new stratosphere of celebrity. And experts in health have been scathing about some of the claims made by Goop and Paltrow. In January 2020, NHS chief Simon Stevens claimed that the Goop brand championed the views of "quacks, charlatans and cranks". His comments followed the Netflix airing of The Goop Lab, a behind-the-scenes view of Paltrow's business.

In an interview Paltrow brushed off criticism with a blithe side swipe at naysayers. "I will never understand the level of fascination and projection. But we don't want to not change the conversation just to please everybody," she said, following up with the assertion that despite a lack of scientific basis for Goop products, unqualified health measures had been around for "thousands of years".

And yet, Paltrow is fully aware of her saleability. Last week, following the drama in which a couple at a Coldplay concert – later revealed to be colleagues from AI company Astronomer – dived to get out of view of the camera, Paltrow was recruited to front a PR campaign for the organisation. SmartCompany labelled it "an iconic PR turnaround". In her clever, deadpan style (which she demonstrated in the ski court trial), Paltrow nails the butter-wouldn't-melt persona the ad calls for.

In the new book by journalist and author Amy Odell,........

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