Gwyneth Paltrow On Her Loves: Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck And Chris Martin

Gwyneth Paltrow has opened up about family, friends and the loves of her life.

The usually tight-lipped Gwyneth Paltrow has opened up about family, friends and the loves of her life. Speaking to Howard Stern’s Sirius XM radio show, the Oscar-winning actress and Goop founder answered awkward questions about her relationships with Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck and Chris Martin, even directly confronting the hysteria that their 'conscious uncoupling' caused last year.

'I made a mistake,' she said of the phrase that went viral after she announced their split on her lifestyle website. 'I didn't give it context. But it is a goofy term.'

Gwyneth then spoke fondly of her 1996 engagement to Brad Pitt and reflected on the couple’s high-profile break-up a year later.

‘I definitely fell in love with him. He was so gorgeous and sweet. I mean, he was Brad Pitt,’ she joked. ‘My father was so devastated when we broke up, he loved him like a son.’

Of the reasoning behind their split, she said; ‘I was such a kid. I was 22 when we met. It's taken me until 40 to get my head out of my ass. You can't make that decision when you're 22 years old . . . I wasn't ready, and he was too good for me . . . I didn't know what I was doing.’

Gwyneth also spoke candidly about her relationship with Ben Affleck, revealing that her parents weren’t quite as keen on the Argo director.

‘I think (my parents) appreciated how he's super intelligent and he's really talented and funny, but he wasn’t in a good place in his life to have a girlfriend. They loved him, but they were OK with us not being together.’

On how she managed to pull two of Hollywood’s hottest actors in the space of a few years, Gwyneth said; ‘When you're in your 20s, you can get swept up in (good looks). When you're a kid, you tend to be more shallow and you're also immature, so you think that being with a good-looking person validates yourself in some kind of way. It's not true.'