Gwyneth Paltrow's ambition has been "unleashed" with Goop.

Gwyneth Paltrow

Gwyneth Paltrow

The 47-year-old star insists she wasn't particularly ambitious when she was a young actress but things changed when she established her own lifestyle brand.

She told America's ELLE magazine's Women in Hollywood issue: "In the '90s, when I was coming up, it was a very male-dominated field," she says. "You used to hear, 'That actress is so ambitious,' like it was a dirty word.

"[Now, with Goop,] my ambition has been unleashed."

Gwyneth - who has children Apple, 15, and Moses, 13, with ex-husband Chris Martin - has returned to acting in 'The Politician' after being persuaded by her husband, the show's producer, writer, and director Brad Falchuk but only agreed to do so when it was agreed they would work around her hectic schedule and even reduce her script.

Brad recalled: "She'd show me a giant chunk of her dialogue and be like, 'I have a board meeting in two days. Please don't make me do this."

The blonde beauty claimed her husband bossed her around on set.

And he admitted: "Well, that's my job. And I think she liked it."

Gwyneth's ease at juggling her hectic schedule is admired by her friends.

Cameron Diaz said: "She was like, 'Of course, I got roped into it.' It's very funny. But she can do 4 million things at once."

And Kate Hudson laughed off suggestions that Gwyneth is exactly like the hippy mother she plays in the show.

She said: "Anybody who thinks that someone as successful as Gwyneth has just been floating around in caftans all day is just being rude. I'm way more like that than Gwyneth - I really do throw crystals around."

But the actress admitted a lot of the character's parenting is based on her.

She said: "The way [my character is] as a mother is most closely based on me. He was also borrowing from other aspects of my life."

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