In a bid to encourage people to buy her new cookbook and go see the third instalment of some films based on a comic book, Gwyneth Paltrow has spent the month giving interviews about abs and gluten. 

And it turns out that the campaign has rubbed people up the wrong way, with the Oscar-winning actress sitting atop Star magazine’s recently published and quite mean-spirited list of the 20 ‘most hated celebrities in Hollywood’. Which seems rather strong.

The US magazine poll comprises a curious assortment of celebrities, including people who have actually committed crimes (the universally detested Chris Brown languishes at number 20), people who have unsavoury love lives (Kristen Stewart is number two; Jesse James – he cheated on Sandra Bullock, remember? – is 19; sausage merchant John Mayer is four), people who act inappropriately at the Anne Frank House (that would be number eight: Justin Bieber) and people who just seem to intensely annoy other people (Taylor Swift, Anne Hathaway). But, perhaps obviously, Gwyneth Paltrow is number one.

Obviously, only because this dubious honour is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the media’s recent Paltrow pillorying. As soon as she opens her mouth, usually in an interview with a glossy magazine or an established TV station, the rest of the media circles around her like a pack of giddy hyenas, picking apart her transcribed words, searching for a risible quinoa quote or an aphorism on ‘acceptance’.

And Paltrow never seems to learn from past mistakes, consistently offering easily ridiculed bon mots to journalists – even giving them away for free on her own lifestyle website, Goop. Her eagerness to share is almost endearing and her honesty on the difficult realities of marriage and postnatal depression actually commendable but when she says things like, ‘I was starting to hike up the Red Rocks, and honestly, it was as if I'd heard the rock say: 'You have the answers. You are your teacher'’ (she shared this information in May’s US Harper’s Bazaar) she makes it far too easy for the media to mock.