Meet Blythe Danner's famous late husband and their two children — including her Oscar-winning actress daughter

Blythe married director and producer Bruce Paltrow in 1969, and they remained married until his death in 2002. Bruce's own Hollywood career included work as a writer, director and executive producer on the seventies show The White Shadow, along with the eighties medical drama, St. Elsewhere.

He passed away from pneumonia and complications from oral cancer in October 2002 during a holiday to Rome to celebrate his daughter Gwyneth's 30th birthday. He was just 58 years old.

In 2015, Blythe revealed that she had never been in another relationship since her husband's death, and she'd found the idea of kissing on-screen in her film I'll See You In My Dreams nerve-racking. 

"I was a little nervous. That was probably the only scene I was a little nervous about… because my husband has been gone for 13 years," she said. "I've had a couple of blind dates, but I haven't had a [serious] date and I'm not really shopping for another relationship. As June [Squibb] says [in the film], ‘When you've had the best, the heck with the rest,’ and that's kind of my attitude about it all."

Gwyneth Paltrow is the eldest child of Blythe and Bruce, born in September 1972. And she credits her famous parents for some of the opportunities she was offered early in her career, with her acting debut in the 1989 TV movie High, which was also directed by her father.

"I was extraordinarily lucky to be given opportunities early on, probably partly because I'm one of the original nepo babies, but I would be lying if I said that that made my path clear," she said at the 2026 New York Women in Film and Television Muse Awards. 

Gwyneth was very close to her father, and said of him: "My father, he was like the rock, the guy you went to with every problem." Naturally, she was devastated after his death. Three weeks later, she met Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, who wrote the song Fix You to help her with her grief.

And while she has previously described herself as a "daddy's girl", she said of her famous mother: "I wouldn't say I'm a mummy's girl, but I have grown to have a tremendous appreciation of her as a woman."

He may not be as instantly recognizable as his sister, but Jake Paltrow has also found success in the entertainment industry. Just like his dad, Jake primarily works behind the camera as a writer, director and producer. Since his 2007 feature film directorial debut, The Good Night, in 2007, he has gone on to work on shows like Boardwalk Empire and NYPD Blue.

Jake was also incredibly close to his dad, and previously told how Bruce was a big inspiration for his 2014 film, Young Ones. "There's a lot of him in it. He died young and we were very close. Not that it's autobiographical in any way at all, but I think there's a lot of him in that character [Ernest] — his sort of compassionate, tough-guy thing, and that was a big part of the Ernest character," he said.