Paltrow was born in Los Angeles to the late Bruce Paltrow (a Jewish American film director) and Blythe Danner (a well known Quaker character actress of part Pennsylvania Dutch descent). Raised in Santa Monica, she attended Spence School, a selective private girls' school in New York City, and briefly studied Art History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before dropping out and committing herself to acting. Paltrow has a younger brother named Jake and is a cousin of actress Katherine Moennig. In May of 2005 she publicly announced that she suffered from depression after the untimely death of her father Bruce Paltrow. |
