Gwyneth Paltrow: 'I don't know why I started Goop'

Goop was intended to be a tiny database for Paltrow's friends. Photo / Getty

Gwyneth Paltrow found it "excruciating" running her lifestyle website.

The Mortdecai star admits there were times when she found it difficult to run Goop but now realises how it was worth all the initial effort.

She said: "I don't know why I started it. There's an aspect of my life where I just follow these threads. I've always been that person for my friends, where they ask me, 'I have a guy coming over for dinner. How do I roast a chicken?' ... So I had all of this information, and it was originally going to be a tiny database for my friends so they would stop f***ing calling me.

Paltrow says she regrets being a little "earnest" when she started to produce content for the site. Photo / Getty

"Then, some part of me thought maybe there are other people in the world who want answers to the same questions that I want and that my friends want. Then it organically turned into Goop ... There have been many times over the years that I've been doing that, that I'm like, 'Why am I doing this? This is totally excruciating and unrewarding, and really painful, and everyone hates it and hates me.'"

And the 43-year-old actress regrets being a little "earnest" when she started to produce content for the site.

Speaking to Lenny Letter, she added: "When I started, I was so earnest. Sometimes I'll see an early incarnation of a page, and I'll read something I wrote, and I'm just like, 'Oh my God.'

"I had to learn as I went. You don't appeal to a broad of a range of people when you're that earnest. You have to be a little bit more savvy about how you communicate. It doesn't mean that I'm not still me."