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"Gwyneth Paltrow sits down, stretches her neck to one side, and blows a blond strand from her lightly freckled face. It&amp;#039;s clearly already been a long week, and now she has a confession to make.  &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll probably get kicked out of our school for admitting this,&amp;quot; she says, glancing around the cozy restaurant near her home in London, &amp;quot;but I let Apple stay home yesterday. I just needed to be with her.&amp;quot;  Apple, 6, is the older of the two cherubic children Paltrow has with her rock-star husband, Chris Martin of the band Coldplay. In recent years, Paltrow has taken time off from work \u2014 a lot of time \u2014 to focus on her family, but with a new movie, Country Strong, just out and a cookbook of family recipes to be published this spring, her life-work balance is slightly askew these days. Having just returned from one business trip to Hong Kong and packing for another to Los Angeles, Paltrow had been eager for some mommy-daughter time. &amp;quot;We went out to lunch, we went to the beauty salon, we were together,&amp;quot; Paltrow says.  All of which was fantastic until Apple&amp;#039;s little brother, Moses, 4, found out. That night, as the kids were brushing and flossing, Apple announced, &amp;quot;Oh, don&amp;#039;t worry, Moses. Tomorrow is your day to stay home from school.&amp;quot;  Only ... it wasn&amp;#039;t.  &amp;quot;I was like, Here we go,&amp;quot; Paltrow says, because she knew what was coming: This is so unfair! But Apple got to! Mommmmmmmy! As Moses started to unravel, Paltrow, 38, turned to her little girl and said, &amp;quot;Apple, couldn&amp;#039;t you have just asked me first? I know you&amp;#039;re trying to make your brother feel better, but...oh, Apple!&amp;quot; Can you guess what happened next? &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s a 6-year-old, and I upset her,&amp;quot; Paltrow explains. &amp;quot;Apple said, &amp;#039;I&amp;#039;m sorry&amp;#039; and burst into tears. I didn&amp;#039;t mean to react that way. Sometimes you really just disappoint yourself as a parent.&amp;quot; Paltrow looks pensive. She says, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve learned so much from being a mom about the kind of person I want to be, the kind of woman I want to be. Motherhood has taught me mindfulness. If you just parent on instinct, you&amp;#039;ll screw your kid up for life. You have to be so mindful.&amp;quot;  Carpooler-in-Chief Paltrow, it seems, struggles with the same worries as millions of other parents do. Which is somewhat heartening, given how tempting it is to pigeonhole her as the golden girl who has everything. In movies from Shakespeare in Love, which won her an Oscar in 1999, to the Iron Man blockbusters, she comes across as the epitome of fair-haired polish and cool refinement, a Grace Kelly for the BlackBerry age. Offscreen, there&amp;#039;s the glamorous marriage, the transcontinental lifestyle, and an illustrious pedigree: Her mom is actress Blythe Danner, and her father, who died in 2002, was respected director Bruce Paltrow. She even has a website, goop.com, that advises users on what to eat and where to shop so they can enjoy life as much as she does.  As Paltrow digs into a pizza with extra cheese for lunch, she looks as radiant as expected, but otherwise comes across as a stretched-to-the-brink mom, wife, and daughter struggling to make sense of it all. Today, for instance, is usually Martin&amp;#039;s day to pick up the kids, but since he&amp;#039;s at a meeting, Paltrow will get Moses from preschool at 3:15, fetch Apple at 3:30, then help her daughter get leotarded in the back of the car for ballet class at 4:00. Paltrow will then keep Moses occupied. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s obsessed with LEGOs, but he also appreciates the fine art of antagonizing his sister,&amp;quot; she says with a conspiratorial smile.  Truth be told, it&amp;#039;s Apple who&amp;#039;s having &amp;quot;issues&amp;quot; today. &amp;quot;Normally, Apple is pretty unflappable,&amp;quot; Paltrow says, but swap Mom in on the usual Daddy-does-pickup day, and let the games begin! Says Paltrow: &amp;quot;Apple started going, &amp;#039;I&amp;#039;m not crazy about that idea! I don&amp;#039;t like change!&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Paltrow adds, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m in a battle right now because Apple doesn&amp;#039;t like to go to gymnastics. When she&amp;#039;s crying about it, I just want to scoop her up and say, &amp;#039;Forget it. Let&amp;#039;s go get an ice cream.&amp;#039; But you can&amp;#039;t do that, of course. That&amp;#039;s something my father taught me. You need to be accountable, and you need to be responsible. You need to honor your commitments.&amp;quot;  Fatherly Advice Paltrow&amp;#039;s dad has been on her mind a lot lately. Bruce Paltrow&amp;#039;s death after a long and heartbreaking battle with throat cancer &amp;quot;completely broke me down,&amp;quot; she says, and it forced her to reckon with big issues: how she wanted to live her life, and what really mattered most. The years leading up to her father&amp;#039;s passing were frenetic, often ungrounded ones for Paltrow, even as her career was soaring with movies like The Talented Mr. Ripley. &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t have kids and I didn&amp;#039;t have a husband, so I was just getting blown from one thing to the next,&amp;quot; she says. That included relationships: Paltrow&amp;#039;s highly publicized engagement to Brad Pitt ended in 1997, after which she dated Ben Affleck and then Luke Wilson. Through it all \u2014 in fact, for as long as Paltrow can remember \u2014 her father was her rock, a stabilizing presence in her life. And she still can&amp;#039;t believe he&amp;#039;s gone: &amp;quot;He died eight years ago, but it&amp;#039;s like it just happened. They say losing someone gets easier with time. I don&amp;#039;t think that&amp;#039;s true.&amp;quot;  Now Paltrow is honoring his memory with My Father&amp;#039;s Daughter, her upcoming cookbook featuring family-inspired recipes: her mom&amp;#039;s blueberry muffins, her dad&amp;#039;s pancakes, and more. The book began the same way Paltrow&amp;#039;s website, goop.com, did \u2014 friends kept asking for recipes. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve always loved to cook,&amp;quot; Paltrow says. &amp;quot;When I was home with the kids, I started cooking like crazy. Friends kept saying, &amp;#039;How do you make this; how do you make that?&amp;#039;&amp;quot;  Paltrow also wanted to share the information about healthy eating she had gleaned during her father&amp;#039;s illness. Bruce Paltrow was not unlike many men who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s: He smoked, enjoyed his vodka after work, and never really paid attention to diet. Part of Paltrow&amp;#039;s reaction to his cancer diagnosis was to look for a cure in what he consumed. &amp;quot;I got obsessed with healthy eating,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;It was almost like I was trying to heal him by proxy, because he wouldn&amp;#039;t really engage.&amp;quot; Once, Paltrow tried to convince her dad to begin a macrobiotic diet. &amp;quot;I remember I gave him some brown rice or something, and he said it was like biting into the New York Times,&amp;quot; she recalls with a wistful smile. As his illness progressed, something shifted in her dad&amp;#039;s lovably gruff exterior. &amp;quot;This very gentle man emerged,&amp;quot; Paltrow says, visibly moved. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;d always been so full of fire, but all his wisdom and gentility came out.&amp;quot; She looks away as tears fill her eyes. &amp;quot;I feel so sad my children won&amp;#039;t ever experience his expressive, hands-on kind of love.&amp;quot; But Bruce Paltrow left his daughter with plenty of tangible love tokens: Not long before he died, he wrote her a letter on her 30th birthday. He had come to Rome to celebrate with her, but he never made it home. Paltrow cherishes that letter more than any other object in her life; she says the message was that &amp;quot;everything up until that point had been a dress rehearsal, and that the life I had ahead of me was going to be so rich and full of amazing things. In a way, he was summing up who I was as a person and where I was going \u2014 and how every stage has been so important and how much he loved me. It was great.&amp;quot; Mr. &amp;amp;amp; Mrs. Martin  There is, of course, another man who loves Paltrow, though she&amp;#039;s reluctant to say too much about him. &amp;quot;Oh, Chris hates when I talk about him,&amp;quot; she groans when asked about her husband. Paltrow met Martin at a Coldplay concert in 2002, and they soon discovered how similar their values were. &amp;quot;We were both raised in really supportive families with very loving parents,&amp;quot; Paltrow says. And she and Martin are definitely of one mind when it comes to preserving their privacy. Seven years ago, the couple exchanged vows in a secret ceremony without family members at a hotel in Santa Barbara, CA. Even now, they are rarely seen in public together, sparking occasional speculation that something&amp;#039;s amiss in their relationship. Paltrow says it&amp;#039;s actually their way of keeping life safe and sane for the family: &amp;quot;If I&amp;#039;m looking grumpy in public or if Chris and I leave a restaurant separately, it&amp;#039;s only because we don&amp;#039;t want to encourage photographers,&amp;quot; she says.  Sometimes, though, the grumpy expressions may be real: &amp;quot;Marriage is hard. Chris and I have had our ups and downs, big-time,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Marriage is way more complicated than just Who gets to control the remote? But hopefully we keep heading in the same direction and getting through the obstacles.&amp;quot;  You can tell by the way she&amp;#039;s stretching her neck again that Paltrow has already said more than she had intended. But she&amp;#039;s clearly a woman who likes to analyze relationships and situations. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m a good talker,&amp;quot; she says \u2014 which is not necessarily how she&amp;#039;d describe Martin, who grew up with that stereotypical stiff upper lip. &amp;quot;I definitely have to coax things out of him when we talk,&amp;quot; Paltrow admits. &amp;quot;You know, he&amp;#039;s British, so it&amp;#039;s a different lexicon totally. But you have to communicate. Otherwise there&amp;#039;s no relationship.&amp;quot; Asked what has allowed their marriage to survive, even with all the scrutiny, Paltrow offers a succinct but sunny description of couplehood: &amp;quot;I can depend on him. He makes me laugh. He&amp;#039;s really appreciative of me. You know, he makes me feel special.&amp;quot; Next: How Gwyneth deals with mommy guilt.  Managing the Mommy Guilt Just as Paltrow wrestles to keep her marriage out of the media, so, too, does she struggle with raising kids in the spotlight. For instance, she recently found Moses sitting in the garage playing toy guns with an invisible opponent. Paltrow closes her eyes tightly at the memory and explains: &amp;quot;He was like, &amp;#039;Take that, paparazzi!&amp;#039; It was crazy. I thought, What I have I gotten these children into?&amp;quot;  It&amp;#039;s moments like those that make Paltrow and Martin work extra hard to keep daily life as grounded as possible. They are determined to attend every assembly at school, every sports event. But togetherness alone isn&amp;#039;t enough; their beliefs also bind the family. Faith, she says, plays a &amp;quot;huge, huge role&amp;quot; in their lives, with Paltrow drawing from a few religious traditions. Her mom has Quaker roots, and her dad was Jewish. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re kind of a mix of everything in our house,&amp;quot; says Paltrow, who says she goes to temple more than church and feels it&amp;#039;s important to teach children about each great figure who defines our religious landscape, be he Jesus, Muhammad, or Buddha. &amp;quot;I believe in God, and I pray with the children every night,&amp;quot; she says. Usually, she helps Apple and Moses remember what they are grateful for and what they wish they had done differently that day. Often, the prayers get very specific: &amp;quot;Apple likes to pray that she&amp;#039;ll never get another cavity,&amp;quot; Paltrow laughs.  As lunchtime ends, Paltrow sits back in her wing chair, sipping a cup of green tea. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s weird, because we&amp;#039;re famous people, but I think our values are primarily family-oriented. We&amp;#039;re not swept up in the whole thing of it,&amp;quot; she says.  If it sounds as if she&amp;#039;s trying to convince herself of something, perhaps she is. Paltrow is the first to admit she doesn&amp;#039;t have all the answers on how her doubly famous marriage is affecting the children. As much as she tries to shield the kids (she hasn&amp;#039;t let them watch her movies, for instance), it&amp;#039;s impossible to sidestep the fact that she and Martin aren&amp;#039;t quite like other parents. &amp;quot;Apple&amp;#039;s getting to the age now where people in her class know who we are,&amp;quot; Paltrow says, looking genuinely mortified. &amp;quot;The other day I said to her, &amp;#039;What do you think I do?&amp;#039; She said, &amp;#039;You&amp;#039;re a movie star.&amp;#039; I was like, &amp;#039;Who told you that?&amp;#039;&amp;quot;  No doubt, it&amp;#039;s in Paltrow&amp;#039;s nature to (over-)analyze situations like these because she&amp;#039;s an involved mom and she knows from experience what an impact a parent&amp;#039;s professional life can have on a family. She recalls how complicated it was for her when her mother went off to act on Broadway, in films like The Great Santini, and in TV movies. &amp;quot;When [I was a child and] my mother had to work, I felt her guilt, and that it caused a lot of chaos for her,&amp;quot; says Paltrow, who sees her mom several times a year (Danner spends much of the summer with Paltrow and her family by the beach). Paltrow&amp;#039;s decision to cut back on her workload when Apple was born had everything to do with wanting to stay present in motherhood; it goes right back to that focus on mindfulness. She refuses to miss many of the everyday joys like snuggly bedtimes (&amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re reading James and the Giant Peach, and I can&amp;#039;t wait to read them Danny the Champion of the World,&amp;quot; she says of the Roald Dahl classics) or &amp;quot;when all of us are cuddled up together, watching Mary Poppins.&amp;quot;  Not that every day goes down like a spoonful of sugar. Careers need tending, hard choices must be made \u2014 and even the best explanations for why Mommy&amp;#039;s out of town can ring hollow to tender ears.  &amp;quot;I came back from Hong Kong and tried to make it about bringing back this rich experience for the kids as well,&amp;quot; Paltrow says, but she knows how tenuous that sounds. She tears up a little. &amp;quot;I do feel so guilty and, like, What am I doing? but I also want them to know work is really fun for me \u2014 &amp;#039;Hey, look what I get to do!&amp;#039; As opposed to feeling like, Oh, I&amp;#039;m a terrible mother. Because that really just doesn&amp;#039;t get you anywhere. It doesn&amp;#039;t get them anywhere.&amp;#039;&amp;quot;  As a foil to Paltrow&amp;#039;s mindful nature, there&amp;#039;s the relaxed Martin. Very relaxed; his wife paints a portrait of him as something of a pushover. &amp;quot;I think dads in general are like that,&amp;quot; Paltrow says. &amp;quot;They just do things you [as a mom] have to wonder about. I&amp;#039;ll say, &amp;#039;Why did you just give the kids yogurt and cookies? It&amp;#039;s almost dinner.&amp;#039; And he&amp;#039;ll say, &amp;#039;Oh, sorry. We were just hanging out.&amp;#039;&amp;quot;  But Martin is no spacey rock-and-roller; he definitely steps up when it counts. When Paltrow was in Hong Kong, Martin had to prepare Apple for her weekly spelling and math quizzes. She had to learn 15 vocabulary words and her 13-times tables, and Paltrow was delighted to return home to see Apple had gotten them all right. &amp;quot;I shouldn&amp;#039;t have been surprised,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s a really good dad.&amp;quot;  Next: How Gwyneth rebounded from the blues. Rebounding From the Blues Perhaps the couple&amp;#039;s most difficult patch came just after Moses was born, when Paltrow was blown off balance by a powerful bout of postpartum depression. Talking about it now, over four years later, the pain still registers clearly on her face.  &amp;quot;I felt like a zombie,&amp;quot; she says softly. &amp;quot;I couldn&amp;#039;t access my heart. I couldn&amp;#039;t access my emotions. I couldn&amp;#039;t connect. It was terrible. It was the exact opposite of what had happened when Apple was born. With her, I was on cloud nine. I couldn&amp;#039;t believe it wasn&amp;#039;t the same [after Moses was born]. I just thought it meant I was a terrible mother and a terrible person.&amp;quot;  Paltrow grew to understand the true nature of her feelings: She interpreted it as the still-deep grief about her father&amp;#039;s death mixed with anxiety about having a son. &amp;quot;I think it was the fear of loving a little boy as much as I loved my dad and more,&amp;quot; she says. It wasn&amp;#039;t until Martin spoke up that Paltrow realized how deeply her mood was affecting the family&amp;#039;s equilibrium. &amp;quot;About four months into it, Chris came to me and said, &amp;#039;Something&amp;#039;s wrong. Something&amp;#039;s wrong,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; she recalls. &amp;quot;I kept saying, &amp;#039;No, no, I&amp;#039;m fine.&amp;#039; But Chris identified it, and that sort of burst the bubble.&amp;quot; Once Paltrow admitted to herself just how bad she was truly feeling, she slowly started to recover.  &amp;quot;The hardest part for me was acknowledging the problem,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I thought postpartum depression meant you were sobbing every single day and incapable of looking after a child. But there are different shades of it and depths of it, which is why I think it&amp;#039;s so important for women to talk about. It was a trying time. I felt like a failure.&amp;quot;  Paltrow dealt with her postpartum depression in therapy and with exercise, and she still finds that fitness is vital. She works out most weekdays, and that morning she&amp;#039;d done a round of arm exercises before almost an hour of dance aerobics. The funkier the beat, the more Paltrow sweats. Her current song rotation is heavy on Beyonc\u00E9 and British hip-hopper Ms. Dynamite, though her young trainer will occasionally kick it old school. Well, sort of. Says Paltrow: &amp;quot;She played a song recently that had a sample from an Annie Lennox song, and I said, &amp;#039;Hey, do you know the original of that?&amp;#039; and she answered, &amp;#039;No. I was born in 1989.&amp;#039; And I thought, OK, then! I&amp;#039;m going to kill myself!&amp;quot;  A Girl and Her Guitar Coming to terms with aging is very much front and center in Country Strong, in which Paltrow portrays a just-out-of-rehab country singer who is at the height of her career. Having lost her way in a fog of alcohol, Paltrow&amp;#039;s character is pushed aside by a rising young superstar. Tim McGraw plays the roguish manager and husband who is more concerned about his wife&amp;#039;s album sales than about her problems with addiction.  Not only does Paltrow sing in the film, but she also had to learn to play guitar. &amp;quot;I actually felt like a musician,&amp;quot; says Paltrow, who recognizes that she&amp;#039;s a go-for-it type A when it comes to personal challenges: &amp;quot;It was so much fun to pick up a new skill. I can be a perfectionist, so I really practiced. And between Chris&amp;#039;s help and the director needing me to be prepared, I was totally ready when the time came.&amp;quot;  Always one to be on time and prepared, Paltrow checks the clock on her smartphone, and her eyes widen. It&amp;#039;s almost 3:00, which means she needs to leave to pick up Moses, then Apple, and then do the tights-and-tutu turnaround in the back of the car by 4:00.  As she rises from the table to resume her life as kiddie chauffeur, Paltrow wants to sum things up, and she once again finds wisdom in her father&amp;#039;s legacy. &amp;quot;Since my dad died, I think a lot about what kind of life I really want for me and for my family,&amp;quot; she says, and this time there&amp;#039;s a sense of peace in her blue eyes. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s the struggle all women face. We have all these aspirations. We want this, and we want that. We take on too many activities, too many commitments. But, really, if you can figure out how to spend time with the people you love, how to laugh and how to take care of yourself, that&amp;#039;s the whole thing right there. That&amp;#039;s the very best part of life.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I was thinking, &amp;#039;Man, I am harmonizing with Vince Gill. How surreal is my life?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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