Gwyneth Paltrow Poses Nude for Her 50th Birthday in James Bond-Inspired Photoshoot

Gwyneth Paltrow is ringing in her 50th year clad in nothing but gold paint. The Oscar winner celebrated her milestone birthday by posing nude in a photoshoot for Goop inspired in part by the 1964 James Bond film Goldfinger. Paltrow looks stunning in the photos, which show her partially covered in gold paint as she poses against an all-white background.

“All I know is that they’re painting me gold and that I have to be naked,” Paltrow wrote about the photoshoot in an article for Goop. “I feel so good turning 50, and this is about expressing that sense of energy and optimism that I’m experiencing. It’s more about the female gaze and just a sense of fun.”

The Goop founder and actress officially celebrated turning 50 on Tuesday but reflected on reaching this point in her life in a recent essay for her lifestyle brand. “I understand on some level that life is linear, that I have lived x number of days thus far and I have more in the basket under my arm than I do in the field before me,” she wrote in part. “But there is something about the sweetness of life that exists deep within me that is unchanged, that will not change. It is the essence of the essence. It seems to be getting sweeter.”

Paltrow continued that while she does everything she can to “strive for good health and longevity,” she is letting go of the need to be perfect. “My body, a map of the evidence of all the days, is less timeless. A collection of marks and irregularities that dog-ear the chapters. Scarred from oven burns, a finger smashed in a window long ago, the birth of a child. Silver hair and fine lines. The sun has left her celestial fingerprints all over me, as if she soaked a brush in dark-taupe watercolor, flecking it over my skin,” the Iron Man actress wrote.

She continued. “And while I do what I can to strive for good health and longevity, to stave off weakening muscles and receding bone, I have a mantra I insert into those reckless thoughts that try to derail me: I accept. I accept the marks and the loosening skin, the wrinkles. I accept my body and let go of the need to be perfect, look perfect, defy gravity, defy logic, defy humanity. I accept my humanity.”