Gwyneth Paltrow has hit out at the term “nepo baby”, calling it an “ugly moniker” and saying children of famous people should not be judged negatively.
Short for nepotism baby, the term refers to the children of celebrities who have succeeded in careers similar to those of their parents.
“Now there’s this whole nepo baby culture, and there’s this judgment that exists around kids of famous people,” the 51-year-old actor said. “But there’s nothing wrong with doing or wanting to do what your parents do.”
Paltrow said her 19-year-old daughter, Apple, was “really just a student” and “just wants to be a kid and be at school and learn”.
She added: “Nobody rips on a kid who’s like: ‘I want to be a doctor like my dad and grandad.’
“The truth is if you grow up in a house with a lot of artists and people making art and music, that’s what you know, the same way that if you grow up in a house with law, the discussions around the table are about the nuances of whatever particular law the parents practise.
“I think it’s kind of an ugly moniker. I just hope that my children always feel free to pursue exactly what they want to do, irrespective of what anybody’s going to think or say.”
The Oscar-winning star, who also runs the wellness brand Goop, has two children with the Coldplay frontman Chris Martin.
Her comments came as she defended her daughter, Apple, from being labelled with the soubriquet. But Paltrow falls into the category herself on multiple levels: the daughter of the actor Blythe Danner and the director Bruce Paltrow, she is also the goddaughter of the cinema icon and most celebrated director of his generation, Steven Spielberg.
It was Spielberg who gave Paltrow her entrance into cinema, giving the 18-year-old the part of a young Wendy Darling in his 1991 film Hook.
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Watching her in the rear-view mirror as he drove her home from the cinema one night, Spielberg later remembered: “It suddenly clicked … So I turned around and said: ‘Do you want to make a movie?’” He added: “She got a Screen Actors Guild card because of it.”
Paltrow has also worked with her parents on a few projects over the years: her father co-produced and directed the karaoke-themed film Duets in 2000, and Danner played her mother in Sylvia in 2003. Both films were poorly received by critics.