Gwyneth Paltrow: Brad Pitt was 'too good' for me

Brad Pitt: too good for Gwyneth Paltrow?

That's what she said.

Gwyneth, 42, dished the dirt on her broken engagement to Brad, nine years her senior, during a candid interview with Howard Stern Wednesday, confessing: "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."

Gwyneth and Brad dated from 1994 to 1997

The pair parted ways in 1997 after a three-year relationship that began when they met up on the set of the 1995 crime drama Seven. "I definitely fell in love with him. He was so gorgeous and sweet. I mean, he was Brad Pitt!"

It took Gwyneth several years to recover from the breakup, and her late father, the producer Bruce Paltrow, also suffered.

"My father was devastated," said the Mordecai actress and Goop founder, who noted that she and Brad remain "friendly" but don't "hang out."

The exes in October 1995

Gwyneth also dished on her 1997-2000 romance with Ben Affleck, 42, revealing that her dad and mom Blythe Danner were less approving of the Gone Girl actor (with whom she starred in 2000's Bounce).

"I think they appreciated how he's super-intelligent and he's really talented and funny," she said. "They loved him, but they were okay with us not being together."

She added of Ben, now a father of three married to Jennifer Garner, "He was not in a good place in his life to have a girlfriend."

With Ben Affleck in July 1998

As for her "conscious uncoupling" from husband Chris Martin, with whom she has a 10-year-old daughter, Apple, and 8-year-old son, Moses, Gwyneth regrets popularizing the term on her lifestyle site, Goop, last spring.

She admitted: "I made a mistake. I didn't give it context. But it is a goofy term."