Happy Birthday, Gwyneth Paltrow! 20 Throwback Photos of the Ultimate ’90s Style Icon

I understand why it might sound strange to call Gwyneth Paltrow underrated. After all, she’s one of our last, true A-listers; the Goop founder’s every move consumes daily headlines, whether she’s releasing a vagina-scented candle or saying that she believes “water has feelings.” Paltrow has also been acting for so long that even she’s lost track of how many Marvel movies she’s been in at this point.

But with the Goop brand consuming the bulk of her attention for the past decade, it’s been a minute since she has sunk her teeth into a role befitting her talents. Marvel and TV projects aside, her last major film was in 2015 (before that: 2012). Paltrow is now better known as a fabulously out-of-touch entrepreneur than an actor, and she seems perfectly fine with that. Having recently said that she’ll “literally never” star in another film again, Paltrow has all but retired from the profession that shot her to stardom in the ’90s—which is, frankly, our loss.

Even if acting is not what Paltrow is most famous for in 2021, she’s always been a natural at it. The daughter of actor Blythe Danner and producer Bruce Paltrow, she made an impression with bit parts in Hook and Malice when she was barely out of high school. Then her high-profile relationship with Brad Pitt made her a tabloid darling, and her roles quickly began to match the level of attention she was getting: She worked with such auteurs as David Fincher (Seven) and Paul Thomas Anderson (Hard Eight), later earning critical acclaim for her breakout role in Emma. Harper’s Bazaar called her “Hollywood’s newest and most promising star” and Vogue made her a cover girl in August 1996. “Gwyneth is well known as the actress every designer wants to dress,” Anna Wintour wrote in her editor’s letter that issue, remarking that the actor was “simultaneously chic, accessible, natural, friendly, and warm.”

Paltrow hardly felt the same way. “They say I was a definitive ’90s style lady, but at the time I thought I was just wearing minimalist stuff with brown lip liner and a lot of powder,” she recently told Vogue. “[My daughter] will sometimes find old pictures of me on Instagram and in a very droll way be like, ‘You’re iconic, Mom.’”

In case she needs further proof, we’ve put together a tribute to some of Paltrow’s most iconic style moments in honor of her 49th birthday.