Gwyneth Paltrow needed to have a serious word with herself. Oh yes, she may look immaculate for today's interview (head-to-toe in black, hair poker-straight), but she's been a bad girl.
"I was terrible," she says, not looking especially repentant. "I was back on the fags, I was drinking..."
Quite a revelation from the woman who is not only married to the most clean-living rock star in the land but who also founded Goop, a website for those who want to know about the finer things in life - as long as they're healthy and preferably organic.
"I can really tell when I cut out alcohol, coffee, processed food and anything fried for a few weeks. I can see the difference," she says. But if you're looking for tell-tale signs of Gwynnie's guilty pleasures, you'll be disappointed. Wearing the sort of no-make-up make-up that must cost an absolute fortune, the actress, who is the face of Boss Nuit Pour Femme, remains as radiant as ever. And you know she's back on the wagon because, for someone who turned 40 last September, she's looking just great.
Did she need a lifestyle change after the big 4-0? "Besides my full face-lift?" she teases - and pulls her ears forward, just so we can see there's no sign of a telltale scar. "can't you tell from my wrinkles?" she adds, offering further proof that her good looks are 100 per cent natural (though if there are any lines, you'd need forensic equipment to spot them).
Ethereal beauty must be a little easier to maintain with untold millions in the bank, but Gwyneth won't have it that she leads an easy life, insisting she's up at seven to get her two children - Apple, eight, and Moses, six - fed and off to their London school.
So do all the other mums stand open-mouthed as a Hollywood movie star casually drops off her kids? "Not any more," she says. "Day one they were. Day two they were like, 'Whatever!' Now I help organise the Christmas parties, try and get out of bingo night... I'm just a regular school mum, totally in with the others."
After the kids are dropped off at school, she'll come home, spend an hour answering emails then work out for an hour and a half. After that she'll get her Goop squad in for planning meetings, more emails, product collaborations and research.
Ask if she's a hard boss and she'll laugh, but she won't say no.
"I'm serious but I'm not hard-core," she reasons. "I don't like to waste time but I don't think I'm scary."
This schedule - the working from home, the reduced filming commitments, the Boss contract - is because she wants to be around for her children as much as possible.
Born into the heart of Hollywood (her mum is actress Blythe Danner, her father was Bruce Paltrow, a successful director and producer), Gwyneth was brought up first in California and then in New York, getting her first big acting break at the age of 19 when she appeared in Steven Spielberg's Hook as the young Wendy. From there she juggled clever films such as Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle with popular hits like Sliding Doors and, of course, Shakespeare in Love, for which she won the Best Actress Oscar, famously giving a tear-soaked acceptance speech and looking every inch the movie star in pink Ralph Lauren.
Now, although she still stars in big-budget movies like the Iron Man series, which has its next instalment released next month, she chooses very carefully what she signs up for.
"When your priority is your family, it's very difficult to go off and do films," she explains. "I'd never see my kids, so I don't do that so much any more. I just try and do one a year and not too big a part - just something interesting."
Similarly, representing Boss works because she's still out there in the public eye but much more available at home.
"I love style and I love beauty, so to get this opportunity is like a dream come true," she says. "I still like to work and be out in the world and interact, so I'm very lucky with this. If I go away to do a commercial or a photo shoot, it's three days as opposed to three months. It's a really nice way to still think about the woman you are and want to be, but not to the degree that I miss their bedtime three months in a row."
Now, if she has to go off to Paris or Madrid for a shoot, she'll leave the kids with her husband, Coldplay frontman chris Martin. And if he's off on tour, she'll take them along for the ride. "We try to alternate," she says, "but we would never leave them because it's depressing to be at home with no parent."
Gwyneth doesn't strike you as one of those celebrity mums whose children are indulged at every turn. Having grown up in Hollywood herself, she is only too aware how many showbiz kids go off the rails. Besides, she has a British husband and has lived in London half her adult life.
Once you have children you have to think about ensuring their success when they're adults,
"Both my husband and I believe in manners and politeness," she says, describing herself and Chris as disciplinarians. "We think that's the way the world opens up to you. Not to be spoiled and to show gratitude. But at the same time, we give them unconditional love so that they feel accepted for who they are."
Ask if she's a helicopter mum, hovering over her children's every movement, she shakes her head: "I really respect my children's individuality and I think my responsibility as a mother is to never judge them or shame them but to guide their behaviour."
Ask if the word "no" ever gets said in her house and she laughs. "Yes," she nods, sounding a little exasperated. "A lot! They ask me basically every five minutes if they can get a free app and I'm… 'no!'
"Once you have children you have to think about ensuring their success when they're adults," she adds. "And if you raise children who are not compassionate and aren't engaged and interested and humble, you're setting them up for... well, the world just won't care about them."
Comments about keeping her kids off carbs may have provoked outrage recently (never mind that the whole family has an intolerance to them) but there can be little doubt that the actress takes motherhood seriously. She talks about how she breast-fed those children for a long time and only started to think about the way she looked when her son was two or three years old.
"When they were little, I was in sweat pants. I was kind of a mess for years really," says Gwyneth, who has previously revealed that she suffered from postnatal depression after Moses was born.
Apparently, it was only a big red-carpet engagement for the second Iron Man movie that licked her back into shape, and she can laugh now at the memory of her "big-boobed, big-stomached" post-baby body.
Now she's back in shape and style, the kids know not to mess up mummy's nice Hugo Boss dress.
"They're very good with that," she says, explaining that Apple is a budding fashion designer. "No touching dresses with chocolate on your fingers. They know."
With her 10th wedding anniversary this year, two well-balanced children,a thriving business (she also owns a chain of gyms in the States) and a there-when-she-wants-it movie career, it looks as if Gwyneth has it all. But it's not been easy, as she'll be the first to admit, even though from the outside it might have seemed so.
"I've had some very difficult, painful relationships," she says. At the age of 24, she was engaged to Brad Pitt, remember, and called off the engagement because she felt she was, in her own words, "a mess" and certainly not ready to get married. She then had a lengthy on-off relationship with Ben Affleck, whose film Argo was the big winner at this year's Oscars. Then she met Chris, just three weeks after her beloved father Bruce died - a bereavement that hit her very hard.
"A friend of mine said the other day, 'People don't know how much you've been through in your life and how you've just kept on going,'" she says. "And it's true - I have amazing things in my life but it hasn't been a piece of cake, for sure."
Gwyneth is the global ambassador for Boss Nuit Pour Femme. Visit fragrances.hugoboss.com.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/showbiz/386636/Gwyneth-Paltrow-Hollywood-s-happiest-star
