Goldie Hawn has been woven into the fabric of pop culture for so long it seems almost impolite to point it out. After all, since skyrocketing to television fame in the 1960s, she’s entertained millions with her movies over a period spanning seven decades, sharing the screen with some of Hollywood’s biggest stars (Warren Beatty in “Shampoo,” legendary Oscar winner Meryl Streep in “Death Becomes Her,” to name just two), while also branching out as a producer and director. Along with capturing the zeitgeist in “The First Wives Club,” she demonstrated her dramatic chops in thriller “Deceived,” and reveled in raucous, raunchy comedy as the mother of occasionally sketchy comedian Amy Schumer in “Snatched.”
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Sure, Hawn has endured some tragic times, including being twice married and twice divorced. However, her longest and most enduring relationship has been with partner Kurt Russell, despite (or perhaps because of) their lack of desire to formalize their union with a wedding. She’s the mother of three kids, all of whom have gone on to successful acting careers of their own while also remaining a deeply committed philanthropist whose charitable foundation continues to change young lives.
It’s fair to say that she’s done it all, and then some. To find out more about this multitalented Hollywood star, read on to discover why the transformation of Goldie Hawn is turning heads.
Goldie Hawn began taking ballet lessons at age 3
Goldie Hawn grew up surrounded by art and creativity. Her father, Edward Rutledge Hawn, was a composer, musician and orchestra leader, while her mother, Laura Hawn, ran her own dance studio. It was her mother’s influence that led young Goldie to begin studying ballet when she was just three. “I was a really good ballerina, a really good dancer. I worked hard from when I was three years old,” she told her daughter, celebrated actor Kate Hudson, for Interview magazine.
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Hawn’s dance talent was evident early on. By the time she was 10, she’d danced in a production of “The Nutcracker,” staged by the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, and she continued pursuing dance throughout her teenage years. After a brief stint at American University, she decided to drop out at age 19 and began teaching ballet to kids.
Over the decades, dance has continued to be a touchstone. “When I talk about dancing through life, it really is how we move,” she explained in a 2020 interview with The Guardian. “It’s how we face today, how we walk into a room, how we pull ourselves up and feel that what we have inside of us is valuable and important … If you can express yourself without being afraid of looking silly — dance like nobody’s watching, right? — I think that is a beautiful thing.”
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She began her showbiz career as a go-go dancer in New York
Goldie Hawn made her professional debut as a dancer during the New York World’s Fair in 1964. “I did the can-can above the bar,” she said while appearing on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” “I was jumping and kicking.”
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She aspired to perform on Broadway, but that didn’t pan out. Instead, she found work as a go-go dancer, putting on a show on tavern tabletops. “When I started go-go dancing on tables for a living, I didn’t want to tell my mom or my dad,” she told Interview. “I made 25 dollars a night, and I was able to make my rent, with the four girls I lived with. It was a challenge.”
Interviewed by Take2MarkTV, Hawn recalled one go-go gig that required her to dance inside a cage. “It was the first time I’d ever been in a cage,” she recalled. For an innate performer such as Hawn, she gave her dancing all she could, as if she were in professional show business and not dancing in bars. “And I remember dancing with all my heart, and I looked at myself in the mirror … and I went, ‘Oh my god, what are you doing? … I don’t think I belong here.'”
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She moved to California and was cast in a short-lived sitcom
Eager to move beyond go-go dancing, Goldie Hawn headed to Hollywood. “I was almost 20, and I was going to dance in a show in a theater across from Disneyland,” she told Interview, recalling dancing in the chorus for a production of the musical “Pal Joey” in Anaheim’s Melodyland Theatre. That led to further gigs in Los Angeles, including dancing in the chorus for a TV show. That, she recalled when appearing on “The Tonight Show,” was how she got her big break. “I got picked out of the chorus line,” she said. “An agent came up to me and said, ‘Gee, do you have an agent?’ And I said, ‘Um, no I don’t.’ And I thought he wanted something else,” she added, assuming the agent’s intentions were less than above board.
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However, she was surprised when she received a call from a major Hollywood talent agency seeking to represent her. That led Hawn to be cast as a series regular in a new sitcom, “Good Morning, World,” which debuted in 1967.
Even though the character — a lovably ditzy dancer — was written specifically for Hawn, leaping from chorus girl to TV star fueled her anxiety and led her to experience panic attacks. “I didn’t want to do that. I was a dancer,” she said when appearing on the “Making Space with Hoda Kotb” podcast, as reported by People. While a psychologist helped her conquer those issues, “Good Morning, World” was canceled after its first season.
She became a national sensation thanks to Laugh-In
The cancelation of “Good Morning, World” proved to be a blessing in disguise for Goldie Hawn, leaving her free to audition for a new comedy series NBC was putting together. That show, “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,” resonated with the counterculture zeitgeist of 1968, and Hawn was a standout. Appearing in a skimpy bikini with groovy phrases painted on her body, Hawn proved to be a standout — as was her catchphrase, “Sock it to me!”
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Interestingly, Hawn got the gig not because she’d nailed the audition — but because she’d botched it. “I missed a word and I went, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, could we go back because I missed a word?’ and I started laughing, because I was so stupid!” she recalled when interviewed by “CBS Sunday Morning.” “Laugh-In” creator George Schlatter shared a similar recollection in an interview with RogerEbert.com, remembering when she was taping an intro and messed it up. “The director interrupted her and said to do it again, and I said, ‘Don’t ever interrupt this woman.’ When she read the wrong words, she would laugh,” Schlatter said. “And that laugh … her laughter paid my mortgage.”
Hawn’s ditzy persona struck a chord with viewers but also left Hawn feeling like an imposter. “Literally I had to pretend I didn’t have a thought in my brain for those years!” she told “CBS Sunday Morning.”
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Laugh-In led Goldie Hawn to movie stardom and an out-of-the-box Oscar win
The success of “Laugh-In” made Goldie Hawn a household name, and opportunities arose. One of these was her first major role in a feature film, co-starring with Walter Matthau in the comedy “Cactus Flower.” Her character believes her married beau (Matthau) won’t leave his wife for the sake of their children — not knowing he has neither a wife nor kids but is lying because he’s terrified of commitment. While the role wasn’t much of a stretch from her “Laugh-In” persona, she inhabited it so well that she was nominated for an Oscar — and won.
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One of the biggest regrets of her life was that she wasn’t there in person to pick up her statue because she was in London at the time filming another movie. “I never got dressed up. I never got to pick up the award,” she told Variety. “I regret it. It’s something that I look back on now and think, ‘It would have been so great to be able to have done that.'”
Not only did she skip the Oscars, but she also didn’t even watch the award show on TV. “I forgot it was on television that night,” she said, recalling she found out when her phone began ringing at 4 a.m., with friends offering their congratulations. It wasn’t until decades later that she actually watched her name read by movie legend (and fellow dancer) Fred Astaire. “I got emotional when I finally saw it,” she admitted.
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She divorced her first husband so she could marry her second
In 1969, the same year that “Cactus Flower” hit theaters, Goldie Hawn married Gus Trikonis. An actor, director, and dancer, Trikonis had been dating Hawn since 1966. The marriage, however, didn’t last long, and they separated in 1973.
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At the time, neither initiated divorce proceedings, preferring to remain legally married while living completely separate lives. “We didn’t get divorced because neither of us wanted to remarry,” Hawn explained in a 1976 interview with People. Eventually, she met Bill Hudson, one-third of the musical trio (and Saturday morning TV stars) The Hudson Brothers. She and Hudson fell in love and decided to get married — which meant she had to officially divorce Trikonis. She filed for divorce, only to be blindsided when her ex demanded $75,000 in cash, his half of their community property as stipulated by California divorce law. While it was far from being among the most egregiously expensive divorces in Hollywood history, she was still stung. “I was hurt,” Hawn said. “He never supported me a day in his life. I don’t blame him for being unemployed — having me for a wife, it was very hard for him to build up confidence.” At the time, she ruefully observed that Trikonis was “doing very well, and I don’t believe he deserves it.”
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While waiting for the divorce to be finalized, she became pregnant. She and Hudson married in 1976, weeks before their son, Oliver Hudson, was born. Daughter Kate Hudson followed, arriving in 1979.
Goldie Hawn separated from musician Bill Hudson shortly after the birth of their second child Kate
When Goldie Hawn and her second husband, Bill Hudson, welcomed daughter Kate Hudson in 1979, their marriage was in shambles. Speaking with RadarOnline, Hawn felt that her second marriage had failed for the same reason as her first: neither of her husbands could cope with being married to a woman who was more famous than them. “The basic problem was that the two men I fell in love with and married just could not cope with the pressure of having a wife who was more successful than they were,” she said.
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They separated in 1980. It wasn’t until 1982, however, that the divorce was finalized.
After Hawn’s divorce from Hudson, his relationship with their two children suffered. “I wanted him in my life, but for complications of life and people and what have you, we had a very, very tough relationship,” Kate Hudson told People. “And so when I was little I wanted to feel that connection with him, but I never got it.” Her brother, Oliver Hudson, joked about his strained relationship with his dad in a Father’s Day Instagram post in 2015, when he shared a photo of himself and his sister as kids with their dad, along with the caption, “Happy abandonment day.”
Goldie Hawn hit box-office gold with Private Benjamin
At the same time that Goldie Hawn’s marriage dissolving, she was also in the midst of her biggest Hollywood success to that point: “Private Benjamin,” the critically acclaimed 1980 comedy that landed her a second Academy Award nomination while earning nearly $70 million at the box office. What made the film’s success even more meaningful for Hawn was the fact that “Private Benjamin” marked her debut as a producer, reflecting her ambition to wield control behind the camera.
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Of course, Hawn had already proven herself to be a savvy businesswoman. When she appeared alongside Warren Beatty in “Shampoo,” she decided to forego a salary and instead negotiated a hefty 7% of the film’s net profits. “It’s like Las Vegas,” she told People, “Now and then you hit it.”
She reflected on that period while appearing on the “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast. As she recalled, after the film became a blockbuster, she was featured on the cover of Newsweek, accompanied by a headline reading “Dumb as a Fox.” “And what that was, I’d say, was a double-edged sword,” she said. “Because suddenly this person who is perceived one way, is now suddenly producing, and that was like a hail, that was a very cool thing. But then, directors, so forth, really felt like I wanted to do my own thing … everything had to be the way I wanted. And that’s where we get into the glass ceiling, how people treat you, how they look at you — until you make another hit.”
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She met soulmate Kurt Russell on the set of Swing Shift
Among Goldie Hawn’s cinematic output, the WWII-era “Swing Shift” is among the most forgettable. However, it’s arguably one of her most important; it was while making the 1984 movie that she fell in love with her co-star, Kurt Russell. They’d actually met before, back in the late 1960s, when both had small roles in the 1966 Disney film “The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band.” At that time, though, romance was out of the question. “I was 21 and he was 16 and I thought he was adorable but he was much too young,” she said during a 2012 appearance on BBC’s “Desert Island Discs” (via the Daily Mail).
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That small age gap was no longer an issue when they reconnected on the “Swing Shift” set. He was smitten, Russell used a questionable pickup line to charm Hawn, telling her, “Man, you’ve got a great figure.” According to Russell, their first date was a night to remember. Recalling the evening on the talk show “Harry,” Russell revealed they’d gone dancing and then wound up in a house that Hawn had been renovating. “We eventually found our way upstairs, looking around at imaginary furniture and we were in the imaginary bedroom, now, and we are realistically having sex,” Russell explained. “The police walked in because we had to break into the place to get in … That was our first date. It was a lot of fun, I’ll tell you what.”
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Goldie and Kurt moved to Vancouver so their son Wyatt could pursue hockey stardom
Since that first date, Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell have remained a committed couple. In addition to Russell serving as a surrogate father for Hawn’s two children from her previous marriage, he and Hawn also welcomed a child of their own, son Wyatt (Russell is also the father of son Boston, shared with ex-wife Season Hubley).
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Wyatt exhibited talent as an athlete and took a keen interest in hockey. By his teens, that talent was evident enough that he was seen as a serious contender for the NHL. To further that goal, Russell and Hawn pulled up stakes and moved to Vancouver so Wyatt could play at a more serious level than he could in LA. “There’s hockey in Los Angeles but up here, it’s their church,” Russell told the Chicago Tribune back in 2003.
Ultimately, his prospective hockey career cratered when he suffered a severe injury. “My whole right side, from my knee to my hip, is torn so I couldn’t play anymore,” Wyatt told Tribune News Services. He went on to join the family business to become an actor and has starred in TV series, including “Lodge 49,” and Marvel’s “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.”
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She launched a charitable foundation focusing on child education
Goldie Hawn’s experience with anxiety early in her showbiz career — and working with a psychologist to treat it — left a lasting impression. Meanwhile, over the years, she’d become disillusioned with increasing violence in schools and incidences of child depression. Recognizing there wasn’t a concerted effort in place to help kids cope with mental health struggles, in 2003, she founded her own foundation to do something about it.
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The Goldie Hawn Foundation launched with a mission to support children’s development — socially, emotionally, and educationally — by using the latest scientific research. “So I brought together neuroscientists, positive psychologists, teachers, and mindfulness practitioners to create a program we call MindUP,” she explained in an interview with the Harvard Business Review. “It’s designed to help children understand their own neurology, develop mental stability, and reduce stress. People told me I would never be able to teach children how their brains work. And I said, Why not?”
Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell have remained happily unmarried for decades
During the four decades they’ve been a couple, Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell have never felt the need to exchange vows. As she revealed during an appearance on British talk show “Loose Women,” she firmly believes that if they had tied the knot, they’d have split by now.
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“Marriage is an interesting psychological thing. If you need to feel bound to someone, then it’s important to be married,” she said (as reported by Elle). “I mean, we’ve been married before and it didn’t work, so why do it again?” she mused, looking back at her own divorces and the financial toll they took on her. “Marriage ends up being a business deal,” she explained, “because at the end of a marriage, no matter how long or short it is, somebody owes somebody money.”
