Gwyneth Paltrow

In 2014, Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin announced their separation on her website with a phrase that became famous: they were "consciously uncoupling." It was mocked as self-help jargon, but it described exactly what they then did, remaining close co-parents and friends in public. The phrase also captured something about Paltrow, an actress who became a businesswoman by turning her own life and relationships into a brand.

Her birth certificate records September 27, 1972, in Los Angeles, at twenty-five past five in the evening, and her chart is dominated by the seventh house, the area of marriage, partnership and the people across the table. The Sun, Mercury and Pluto in Libra and Mars at the very end of Virgo all fall there. Libra is the sign of partnership, image and harmony, and with so much of it in the seventh, astrologers would expect a life defined to an unusual degree by relationships. Paltrow's public life has been: famous engagements and marriages, a celebrated divorce, and a second marriage, to the television writer and producer Brad Falchuk in 2018.

She grew up in a show-business family; her mother is the actress Blythe Danner and her father was the producer and director Bruce Paltrow. After early roles in Seven and Emma, she took the Oscar for Best Actress for Shakespeare in Love in 1999, delivering a famously tearful speech. She went on to The Royal Tenenbaums and, later, Pepper Potts in the Iron Man and Avengers films.

Her Moon is in Gemini in the third house, which governs communication, writing and daily exchange. Gemini Moons are curious and talkative, and in the third they need to share ideas. In 2008 Paltrow launched Goop as a weekly email newsletter of recommendations from her kitchen and travels. It grew into a wellness and lifestyle company selling clothing, beauty products and supplements, and also into a magnet for criticism; in 2018 the company settled a consumer-protection lawsuit over health claims about some of its products.

Jupiter sits at the very start of Capricorn in the tenth house of career and public standing. Jupiter expands, and Capricorn builds; in the tenth, the placement points to a career that grows into an institution. Goop turned an actress into the founder of a company valued in the hundreds of millions.

Pisces is on her Ascendant, giving a soft, dreamy quality to her public image, and Venus in Leo sits in the sixth house of daily routine and health, which may be the most literal description of a wellness brand that astrology could offer.

Whatever one thinks of Goop, it was built on the seventh house: her name, her relationships and an audience that wanted to know how she lived.