She always insisted there was no one else in her life... Is this man the REAL reason Gwyneth's marriage hit the rocks?

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New Love? Hollywood TV producer Brad Falchuk

According to fellow diners at the Chinois On Main restaurant in Santa Monica, LA, Gwyneth Paltrow was in high spirits on Sunday night. 

After warmly embracing the manager, she and her handsome companion were all smiles — constantly laughing, touching and even holding hands over their signature lobster with curry sauce and black cod.

And why not? The couple, who looked ‘very much in love’, were perhaps celebrating having successfully negotiated their first public appearance together the night before, at actor Robert Downey Jr’s 50th birthday party. 

They arrived at the bash in a sparkling white Range Rover, his arm casually slipped round her slender waist, and spent the evening mingling with Hollywood stars including Gwyneth’s great friend Jennifer Aniston and actors Tobey Maguire, Reese Witherspoon and Katie Holmes.

So, who is this new beau — and how long has he been on the scene?

Judging by their relaxed body language at the weekend, it’s far from the first date Gwyneth’s enjoyed with handsome Hollywood TV producer Brad Falchuk, even if it was their first public one. 

They were first seen together on a romantic weekend break eight months ago. Some gossips suggest that the spark was, in fact, lit a full four years ago, when they were introduced on the set of TV series Glee.

At that time, of course, both were married to other people, which would certainly explain their great discretion. And since both have children with their estranged spouses, you can see why they would tread very carefully indeed.

All that friends of the couple would say, in a statement made this week to People magazine, is that ‘Gwyneth and Brad have had a personal relationship for a long time. It is still evolving’.

Timings aside, it seems that in 44-year-old Brad — successful, handsome and creative — Gwyneth, 42, has finally chosen a partner who may, at last, match up to her beloved late father Bruce, a noted TV producer, just like Brad.

Importantly, her new beau is Jewish, which connects to her own mixed-faith heritage: with a Quaker mother and a Jewish father, she was raised in a home where both faiths were celebrated.

Her brother, though, went through a bar mitzvah and, during her London period, under the influence of former friend Madonna, she was deeply interested in studying the Kabbalah — a mystical tradition rooted in the Jewish faith — and told an interviewer that she attended temple more than church.

Under the influence of her new boyfriend, and his devoutly religious family, Gwyneth appears to be essaying a full conversion to Judaism. 

She was seen celebrating Hanukkah in December at a function at the White House, though one of her PRs tried to prevent photos being taken of her arrival. 

You can see why people believe that a Jewish wedding may be on the agenda.

If this new relationship does blossom into a marriage, then who can doubt that Brad has already gone many miles for his somewhat high-maintenance girlfriend — in the past year, he has overhauled his hair, wardrobe and physique.

Since getting together with Paltrow, Falchuk has begun working out almost daily with her fitness guru Tracy Anderson, something her now-estranged husband, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, avoided, despite years of nagging on the subject.

The new couple were pictured in Hollywood last weekend for Robert Downey Jr’s 50th birthday party

What’s more, I am told he has written a TV script with a role just for her, and that she has read it and loves it. This may seem small beer for an Oscar winner like Gwyneth but, in fact, Falchuk’s star power in Hollywood rather eclipses hers.

He is one of the co-creators of the smash-hit series Glee — which is, of course, how they met. He also originated hit series American Horror Story and has 13 Emmy nominations to his name. His clout is such that he has just signed a second multi-million-dollar exclusive deal with Twentieth Century Fox to develop TV shows for them.

As one of the most in-demand creatives in town, he also has the pick of Hollywood actors. Right now, every film actor wants to be in TV, from Kevin Spacey onwards. TV pays well, demands less time and is enjoying a creative renaissance, while cinema appears to be stuck in an endless run of remakes and comic-book capers.

While Gwyneth is the well-connected daughter of leading actress Blythe Danner and notable TV producer Bruce Paltrow (her godfather is film director Steven Spielberg), Brad’s family is, arguably, even more impressive.

His mother is a noted charitable fundraiser and his brother recently stood for the governorship of Massachusetts. Brad’s father, Kenneth, grew up in Venezuela, before being sent to New York for schooling and settling in Boston, where he met wife Nancy, a nurse. After working as a doctor, Kenneth became a professor at Harvard Medical School and set up a medical consulting company — now said to be worth £135 million.

Meanwhile, Nancy is a formidably groomed figure, noted for effective campaigning, who rose to become national president of Hadassah, an international women’s Zionist organisation. Let’s hope she takes to Gwyneth, who has been at pains to play up her own Jewish heritage of late.

Gwyneth was pictured with estranged husband Chris Martin in Mexico earlier this month

Promoting her cook books, Gwyneth recently declared she is ‘the original Jewish mother’ because she so enjoys cooking for her family and friends.

Of his upbringing, Falchuk has said: ‘It was a very curious family. We travelled . . . There were always books around, and a great deal of humour.’

The comparisons with the Paltrow family are obvious. Raised in New York and LA, Gwyneth is from an identically liberal, moneyed background. As for travel, Bruce’s dying act was to take his daughter around the wonders of Rome.

Brad’s sister-in-law, Felicia, says of the Falchuk clan: ‘They are all so charismatic and good-looking. They all have that special quality that draws people to them and makes them leaders.’ Certainly, it was enough to attract Gwyneth, who is said to have remarked that her new man is a ‘hot nerd’ — intellectual yet sexy — and therefore just her type.

But Brad has had to work hard for his success. At school, he suffered from undiagnosed dyslexia, before winning a place at the American Film Institute and scoring his first success as a writer on the TV series Mutant X in 2001.

By then, he had met Suzanne Bukinik, a bright young woman from the Bronx in New York who, like him, had moved to LA to try to make it in the entertainment business. They married in 2003 and had two children, Brody and Isabella. In the early years, her career was bigger: she was producer of TV series According To Jim from 2001 to 2009.

The starry couple famously announced their 'conscious uncoupling' on goop.com

But in 2003 Brad got his biggest break as a writer on drama series Nip/Tuck. There, he became friends with Ryan Murphy, the show’s creator, and the two went on to have the idea of a show about high school show choirs: Glee. Premiering in 2009, it was an immense global hit, and brought Falchuk suddenly into contact with the A-list, including Gwyneth.

In 2010, Gwyneth guest-starred in the show as a Spanish teacher, filming while far away from Chris Martin and their sometimes rather fraught home life in Belsize Park, North London.

By 2010, the Paltrow-Martin union was in trouble. Theirs had been a shotgun marriage (her words), after a brief romance when she was deep in desperate grief for her beloved father, who passed away three weeks before they met.

She and Martin had hit a serious rough patch soon after she had son Moses in 2006. Gwyneth had post-baby blues and the couple were said to be struggling to hold everything together.

In 2008, she astonished diners at a charity event by remarking a propos her marriage: ‘Nothing is as good as it looks.’ She added she and Chris would ‘always be family’, whether or not they managed to stay married. 

Speculation that all was not well reached its peak in 2009, when it was incorrectly reported they were to divorce — and that Chris Martin had been seen looking cosy with actress Kate Bosworth at a U2 gig. Legal action was promised against the U.S. magazine that published the rumours, but never taken.

In an interview in 2010, she said: ‘Sometimes it’s hard being with someone for a long time'

The fact that, in a decade together, they were never seen together at the Oscars or the Grammys, and took numerous separate holidays, only added to the buzz about marital discord.

Gwyneth worked and worked, endorsing Hugo Boss, Tod’s shoes, Estee Lauder, even bagged salad. Some felt she wanted to build her business empire as she was sure they would split.

In an interview in 2010, she said: ‘Sometimes it’s hard being with someone for a long time. We go through periods that aren’t all rosy.’ Enter Brad Falchuk — handsome, urbane and a major player in Hollywood. He is, obviously, everything Chris is not.

Did they fall for each other while still married to other people? That’s an explosive question, and several respected showbusiness websites have suggested it was the alleged affair with Falchuk that ended her marriage. 

Falchuk’s wife filed for divorce in March 2013. The Paltrow-Martins announced their split, after what they described as more than a year of working through issues, in March 2014.

It has also been suggested it was this she feared would be exposed in a Vanity Fair ‘takedown’ that was planned but not published, rather than (denied) allegations of a romance with Miami-based billionaire Jeff Soffer. 

One person who presumably knows the truth is Brad’s now ex-wife, Suzanne. This week, outside her new £1.5 million home in Mandeville Canyon, she had nothing to say about Gwyneth and Brad.

An attractive woman with long, loose brown hair, she merely shook her head when asked questions about her ex-husband. You may think it would be simplest for her to dispel the rumours by saying Gwyneth didn’t break up her marriage — but she never has.

Instead, for whatever reason, she has stood by and allowed the other woman to take some vilification. (The other woman who, by coincidence, lives just a mile away, on the other side of the same road.)

‘Gwyneth: Homewrecker!’ screamed one of America’s supermarket tabloids in August last year, when she and Brad were first linked.

For once, Gwyneth’s spokesman, Stephen Huvane, had nothing to say. Asked for comment as to when the romance started, he did not reply.

Star magazine was the first to report the new romance, saying that the pair had gone for a romantic weekend at the super-luxe Amangiri resort in Utah in July 2014. One eyewitness glimpsed them sunbathing by their private pool: ‘They were lying next to each other and Gwyneth was topless.’

Inevitably, it was said Chris Martin was devastated there was a romantic relationship. But both have moved on. They continue, to their credit, to ‘co-parent’ their children Apple and Moses, and last week were on holiday as a family in Mexico.

Martin has bought a home over the road from Gwyneth in LA, and they often share family time (though it never seems to involve his new actress girlfriend, Jennifer Lawrence).

Last month, Gwyneth told a magazine of their separation: ‘I feel like I’m in the relationship [with Chris Martin] that we were meant to have.’

As for her romance with Brad? Although she may have kept it very quiet, the signs are that she feels just the same about this four-years-in-the-making relationship, too.