Gwyneth Paltrow strives to see the "positives" in her divorce from Chris Martin.

Gwyneth Paltrow

Gwyneth Paltrow

The 44-year-old actress parted ways with the Coldplay frontman - with whom she has two children, Apple, 13, and Moses, 11 - in 2015 before their divorce was finalised a year later, and has said that whilst she knows her decision to leave Chris was for the best, she admits the process was "the most difficult thing" she's ever been through.

Speaking about her divorce, the 'Iron Man' actress said: "I wanted to turn my divorce into a positive. What if I didn't blame the other person for anything, and held myself 100 percent accountable? What if I checked my own s**t at the door and put my children first? And reminded myself about the things about my ex-husband that I love, and fostered the friendship?

"What I put myself through to get there was the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life."

And although she found the split hard, Gwyneth has learned how to turn her "huge pain" into a "stepping stone" to take her to the next phase of her "extraordinary life".

She added: "I've had an extraordinary life, where things have happened in a huge way - huge success, huge joy, huge pain, huge loss. And the reason I feel happy today is because I've milked the f**k out of every opportunity. I haven't made one mistake that I haven't used as a stepping stone to get somewhere else. I'm ruthless when it comes to using the hard things."

Meanwhile, the 'Mortdecai' star has praised her brood for being able to "handle fame", and said she was particularly pleased that her daughter Apple is growing up without "insecurity".

She told Net-A-Porter's The Edit magazine: "My kids can handle [fame]. They know their lives are extraordinary. And girls today are allowed to be anything; they're self-possessed, confident, they like themselves. In Apple's peer group, I don't see the insecurity I saw at that age."