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. She is a vegetarian and a good friend of both Madonna and Christina Applegate, but she earned the enmity of Sharon Stone due to her performance as Stone in a Saturday Night Live skit that poked fun at Stone and her then-husband, Phil Bronstein. She had a much-publicized romance with Brad Pitt and was also once linked romantically to Ben Affleck. On December 5, 2003, she married Chris Martin of the rock group Coldplay in secret. Paltrow gave birth to their first child, Apple Blythe Alison Martin, on May 14, 2004. She has been quoted as saying she chose the name Apple because it was "the sweetest, loveliest name." In December 2005, her mother confirmed to the television program Entertainment Tonight that Paltrow is pregnant with a second child, due in spring 2006. Neither Paltrow nor her husband have so far commented on this. Her debut film was Shout (1991), and later the same year she played in family friend Steven Spielberg's Hook (1991). She later starred in Se7en (1995), dating her co-star Brad Pitt. Her performance in Emma (1996) received its share of praise. She was awarded the Academy Award for Best Actress two years later for her performance in Shakespeare in Love (1998), in which Affleck appeared. She has since had a steady film career, with a few notable film roles, including Proof (2005) and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001).
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