Goldie Hawn

Goldie Hawn
Hawn in 2008
Born
Goldie Jeanne Hawn

(1945-11-21) November 21, 1945 (age 78)
OccupationActress
Years active1966–present
Spouses
(m. 1969; div. 1976)
(m. 1976; div. 1982)
PartnerKurt Russell (1983–present)
Children

Goldie Jeanne Hawn (born November 21, 1945) is an American actress. She rose to fame on the NBC sketch comedy program Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1968–1970), before going on to receive the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Cactus Flower (1969).

Hawn appeared in such films as There's a Girl in My Soup (1970), Butterflies Are Free (1972), The Sugarland Express (1974), Shampoo (1975), Foul Play (1978), Seems Like Old Times (1980), and Private Benjamin (1980), for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for playing the title role. She later starred in Overboard (1987), Bird on a Wire (1990), Death Becomes Her (1992), Housesitter (1992), The First Wives Club (1996), The Out-of-Towners (1999), and The Banger Sisters (2002). Hawn made her return to film with roles in Snatched (2017), The Christmas Chronicles (2018), and The Christmas Chronicles 2 (2020).

Hawn is the mother of actors Oliver Hudson, Kate Hudson and Wyatt Russell, and has been in a relationship with Kurt Russell since 1983. In 2003, she founded The Hawn Foundation, which educates underprivileged children.

Early life

Hawn was born in Washington, D.C. to Laura (née Steinhoff), a jewelry shop/dance school owner, and Edward Rutledge Hawn, a musician and conductor who was a descendent of Edward Rutledge, the youngest signer of the Declaration of Independence. She was named after her mother's aunt. She has one sister, entertainment publicist Patti Hawn; their brother, Edward Jr., died in infancy before Patti was conceived. The girls were unaware of their deceased brother's existence growing up.

Her father was a Presbyterian of German and English descent. Her mother was Jewish, the daughter of immigrants from Hungary. Hawn was raised Jewish in Takoma Park, Maryland, and attended Montgomery Blair High School in nearby Silver Spring, Maryland.

Hawn began taking ballet and tap dance lessons at the age of three and danced in the corps de ballet of the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo production of The Nutcracker in 1955. She made her stage debut in 1964, playing Juliet in a Virginia Shakespeare Festival production of Romeo and Juliet.

In 1964, Hawn ran and taught in a ballet school, having dropped out of American University where she was majoring in drama. She made her professional dancing debut in a production of Can-Can at the Texas Pavilion of the New York World's Fair. She began working as a professional dancer a year later and appeared as a go-go dancer in New York City and at the Peppermint Box in New Jersey.

Career

1960s

Publicity photo for Cactus Flower (1969)

Hawn moved to California to dance in a show at Melodyland Theatre, a theater in the round across from Disneyland, joining the chorus of Pal Joey and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying during the June 14 to September 1966 season. Hawn began her acting career as a cast member of the short-lived sitcom Good Morning World during the 1967–1968 television season, her role being that of the girlfriend of a radio disc jockey, with a stereotypical "dumb blonde" personality.

Her next role, which brought her to international attention, was also as a dumb blonde, as one of the regular cast members on the 1968–1973 sketch comedy show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. Hawn often broke out into high-pitched giggles in the middle of a joke, then delivered a polished performance a moment after. Noted equally for her chipper attitude as for her bikini-attired and painted body, Hawn was seen as a 1960s "It" girl.

Her Laugh-In persona was parlayed into three popular film appearances in the late 1960s and early 1970s: Cactus Flower, There's a Girl in My Soup, and Butterflies Are Free. Hawn made her film debut in a bit role as a giggling dancer in the 1968 film The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band, in which she was billed as "Goldie Jeanne", but in her first major film role, in Cactus Flower (1969), she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as Walter Matthau's suicidal fiancée. The same year, she appeared in The Spring Thing, a television special hosted by Bobbie Gentry and Noel Harrison. Other guests were Meredith MacRae, Irwin C. Watson, Rod McKuen, Shirley Bassey and Harpers Bizarre.

1970s

With Carl Reiner on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, 1970

After Hawn's Academy Award win, her film career took off. She starred in a string of above average and successful comedies starting with There's a Girl in My Soup (1970), $ (1971), and Butterflies Are Free (1972). She continued proving herself in the dramatic league in 1974 with the satirical dramas The Girl from Petrovka and Steven Spielberg's theatrical debut The Sugarland Express. She then co-starred in Hal Ashby's classic satire Shampoo (1975). She also hosted two television specials: Pure Goldie in 1971 and The Goldie Hawn Special in 1978. The latter was a sort of comeback for Hawn, who had been out of the spotlight for two years since the 1976 release of the romantic comedy western The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox, while she was focusing on her marriage and the birth of her son.

On the special she performed show tunes and comedy bits alongside comic legend George Burns, teen matinee idol Shaun Cassidy, television star John Ritter (during his days on Three's Company), and even the Harlem Globetrotters joined her for a montage. The special later went on to be nominated for a primetime Emmy. Four months later the film Foul Play (with Chevy Chase), was released and became a box office smash, reviving Hawn's film career. The plot centered around an innocent woman in San Francisco who becomes mixed up in an assassination plot. Hawn's next film, Mario Monicelli's Lovers and Liars (1979), was a box office bomb.

In 1972, Hawn recorded and released a solo country LP for Warner Brothers, titled Goldie. It was recorded with the help of Dolly Parton and Buck Owens. AllMusic gives the album a favorable review, calling it a "sweetly endearing country-tinged middle of the road pop record".

1980s

Hawn at the Grand Hôtel in Stockholm, 1981

Hawn's popularity continued into the 1980s, starting with another primetime variety special alongside actress and singer Liza Minnelli, Goldie and Liza Together (1980), which was nominated for four Emmy Awards. In the same year, Hawn took the lead role in Private Benjamin, a comedy she co-produced with her friend Nancy Meyers, who co-wrote the script. Meyers recalls Hawn's reaction when she first described the idea for the story with Hawn as its lead:

It was like watching the greatest audience I've ever seen. She laughed and then she got real emotional and her eyes would fill up with tears. She loved the image of herself in an Army uniform and she loved what the movie had to say.

Private Benjamin also stars Eileen Brennan and Armand Assante and garnered Hawn her second Academy Award nomination, this time for Best Actress. Hawn's box office success continued with comedies like Seems Like Old Times (1980), written by Neil Simon; Best Friends (1982), written by Valerie Curtin and Barry Levinson; Protocol (1984), co-written by Nancy Meyers; Wildcats (1986)—Hawn also served as executive producer on the latter two; and the World War II romantic drama Swing Shift (1984).

At the age of thirty-nine, Hawn posed for the cover of Playboy's January 1985 issue and was the subject of the Playboy Interview. Her last film of the 1980s was opposite partner Kurt Russell, for the third time, in the comedy Overboard (1987).

Hawn in 1989

1990s

In 1990, she starred in the action comedy Bird on a Wire, a critically panned but commercially successful film that paired Hawn with Mel Gibson. Hawn had mixed success in the early 1990s, with the thriller Deceived (1991), the drama CrissCross, and opposite Bruce Willis and Meryl Streep in Death Becomes Her (both 1992). Earlier that year, she starred in Housesitter, a screwball comedy with Steve Martin, which was a commercial success.

Hawn was absent from the screen for four years while caring for her mother, who died of cancer in 1994. Hawn made her entry back into film as producer of the satirical comedy Something to Talk About starring Julia Roberts and Dennis Quaid and made her directorial debut in the television film Hope (1997) starring Christine Lahti and Jena Malone. Hawn returned to the screen again in 1996 as the aging, alcoholic actress Elise Elliot in the financially and critically successful The First Wives Club, opposite Bette Midler and Diane Keaton, with whom she covered the Lesley Gore hit "You Don't Own Me" for the film's soundtrack. Hawn also performed a cover version of the Beatles' song, "A Hard Day's Night", on George Martin's 1998 album, In My Life.

She starred in Woody Allen's musical Everyone Says I Love You (1996) and reunited with Steve Martin for the comedy The Out-of-Towners (1999), a remake of the 1970 Neil Simon hit. The film was critically panned and was a box office failure. In 1997, Hawn, along with her co-stars from The First Wives Club, Diane Keaton and Bette Midler, received the Women in Film Crystal Awards.

In 1999, she was awarded Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year.

2000s

In 2001, Hawn was reunited with former co-stars Warren Beatty (her co-star in $ and Shampoo) and Diane Keaton for the comedy Town & Country, a critical and financial fiasco. Budgeted at an estimated US$90 million, the film opened to little notice and grossed only $7 million in its North American theatrical release. In 2002, she starred in The Banger Sisters, opposite Susan Sarandon and Geoffrey Rush, her last live action film for fifteen years. In 2005 Hawn's autobiography, A Lotus Grows in the Mud, was published.

2010s

In 2013, Hawn guest-starred, along with Gordon Ramsay, in an episode of Phineas and Ferb, in which she provided the voice of neighbor Peggy McGee. In 2017, Hawn returned to the big screen for the first time since 2002, co-starring with Amy Schumer in the comedy Snatched, playing mother and daughter. In 2018, Hawn cameoed as Mrs. Claus in the Netflix film The Christmas Chronicles. She played Mrs. Claus again, in a leading role, in its 2020 sequel The Christmas Chronicles 2.

Personal life

Hawn has studied meditation. In a 2012 interview, she stated, "I don't think of myself as a Buddhist. I was born Jewish, and I consider that my religion." She also stated, "It's not the idea of a particular religion that's important; it's the development of a spiritual life."

Hawn at the Cinema Against AIDS gala in May 2011

Hawn is a supporter of the LGBT community. Speaking on nations such as Nigeria and others which have criminalized gay people, she denounced these laws, stating, "This is man's inhumanity to man, of the first order."

Marriages and relationships

Hawn's pre-fame boyfriends included actor Mark Goddard and singer Spiro Venduras. Her first husband was (later director) Gus Trikonis, who appeared as a Shark in West Side Story and with whom she shares the same birthday. They married on May 16, 1969, in Honolulu, Hawaii and separated on April 9, 1973. Hawn then dated stuntman Ted Grossman, Swedish actor Bruno Wintzell and Italian actor Franco Nero, but did not file for divorce from Trikonis until New Year's Eve 1975, after becoming engaged to musician Bill Hudson of the Hudson Brothers, whom she’d met the previous summer on a first-class flight from New York to Los Angeles. Hawn was granted a divorce in June 1976 and married Hudson on July 3, 1976, in Takoma Park, Maryland. They had two children, son Oliver (born September 7, 1976) and daughter Kate (born April 19, 1979). Hudson filed for divorce on August 15, 1980. Hawn subsequently had a romance with French actor Yves Rénier. The divorce from Hudson was finalized in March 1982.

Hawn has been in a relationship with Kurt Russell since Valentine's Day 1983. The couple first met while filming The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band in 1966, but became involved after reconnecting on the set of Swing Shift. They have a son together, Wyatt (born July 10, 1986). In 2000 and again in 2004, news outlets reported that Hawn and Russell were on the verge of breaking up. During the alleged separations, Hawn was linked to newsman Charles Glass and Pakistani cricketer and Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan. Hawn and Russell, who celebrated 35 years together in 2018, own homes in Vancouver, Snowmass, Manhattan, Santa Ynez Valley, Brentwood; and Palm Desert. Hawn has revealed that she has no plans to marry Russell, stating that she "would have been long divorced if [she'd] been married," and that she and Russell chose to stay together and they do not feel that marriage "cements" a relationship.

The Hawn Foundation

In 2003, Hawn founded the Hawn Foundation, a non-profit organization which provides youth education programs intended to improve academic performance through "life-enhancing strategies for well-being". The Hawn Foundation has supported research studies conducted by external researchers to evaluate the effectiveness of its educational program for children, called MindUP.

Filmography

Film

Year Title Role Director Notes Ref.
1968 The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band Giggly Girl Michael O'Herlihy
1969 The Sidehackers Spectator Gus Trikonis Uncredited
Cactus Flower Toni Simmons Gene Saks
1970 There's a Girl in My Soup Marion Roy Boulting
1971 $ Dawn Divine Richard Brooks
1972 Butterflies Are Free Jill Tanner Milton Katselas
1974 The Sugarland Express Lou Jean Steven Spielberg
The Girl from Petrovka Oktyabrina Robert Ellis Miller
1975 Shampoo Jill Haynes Hal Ashby
1976 The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox Amanda Quaid / Duchess Swansbury Melvin Frank
1978 Foul Play Gloria Mundy Colin Higgins
1979 Lovers and Liars Anita Mario Monicelli
1980 Private Benjamin Judy Benjamin Howard Zieff
Seems Like Old Times Glenda Parks Jay Sandrich
1982 Best Friends Paula McCullen Norman Jewison
1984 Swing Shift Kay Walsh Jonathan Demme
Protocol Sunny Davis Herbert Ross
1986 Wildcats Molly McGrath Michael Ritchie
1987 Overboard Joanna Stayton / Annie Proffitt Garry Marshall
1990 Bird on a Wire Marianne Graves John Badham
1991 Deceived Adrienne Saunders Damian Harris
1992 CrissCross Tracy Cross Chris Menges
Housesitter Gwen Duncle / Buckley / Phillips Frank Oz
Death Becomes Her Helen Sharp Robert Zemeckis
1996 The First Wives Club Elise Elliot Atchison Hugh Wilson
Everyone Says I Love You Steffi Dandridge Woody Allen
1999 The Out-of-Towners Nancy Clark Sam Weisman
2001 Town & Country Mona Morris Peter Chelsom
2002 The Banger Sisters Suzette Bob Dolman
2012 Hot Flash Havoc Narrator Marc Bennett Documentary
2017 Snatched Linda Middleton Jonathan Levine
SPF-18 Narrator Alex Israel
2018 The Christmas Chronicles Mrs. Claus Clay Kaytis Cameo
2020 The Christmas Chronicles 2 Mrs. Claus Chris Columbus

Television

Year Title Role Notes
1967–68 Good Morning World Sandy Kramer Season 1 (20 episodes)
1968–70 Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In Goldie Seasons 1–4 (64 episodes)
1997 Space Ghost Coast to Coast Herself Season 4 (Episode: "Pavement")
2013 Phineas and Ferb Peggy McGee (voice) Season 4 (Episode: "Thanks But No Thanks"/"Troy Story")
2022 Gutsy Herself Episode TBA

Other

Year Title Work Notes
1980 Private Benjamin Executive producer Feature film
1984 Protocol Executive producer Feature film
1986 Wildcats Executive producer Feature film
1987 Overboard Executive producer (uncredited) Feature film
1990 My Blue Heaven Executive producer Feature film
1992 CrissCross Executive producer (uncredited) Feature film
1995 Something to Talk About Executive producer Feature film
1997 Hope Director/executive producer Television film
2001 When Billie Beat Bobby Executive producer Television film
2002 The Matthew Shepard Story Executive producer Television film

Discography

Albums

Singles

Awards and nominations

Association Year Category Work Result Ref(s)
Academy Awards 1970 Best Supporting Actress Cactus Flower Won
1981 Best Actress Private Benjamin Nominated
American Comedy Awards 1987 Funniest Actress in a Motion Picture (Leading Role) Wildcats Nominated
1988 Overboard Nominated
1993 Housesitter Nominated
1997 The First Wives Club Nominated
Bambi Awards 1999 International Film Actress Won
British Academy Film Awards 1971 Best Actress in a Leading Role Cactus Flower
There's a Girl in My Soup
Nominated
CinemaCon Awards 2017 Cinema Icon Award Won
David di Donatello Awards 1970 Special David Award Cactus Flower Won
Goldene Kamera Awards 2005 Lifetime Achievement Award Won
Golden Globe Awards 1970 Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture Cactus Flower Won
New Star of the Year – Actress Nominated
1973 Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical Butterflies Are Free Nominated
1976 Shampoo Nominated
1977 The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox Nominated
1979 Foul Play Nominated
1981 Private Benjamin Nominated
1983 Best Friends Nominated
2003 The Banger Sisters Nominated
Golden Raspberry Awards 2002 Worst Supporting Actress Town & Country Nominated
2018 Snatched Nominated
Hasty Pudding Theatricals 1999 Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year Won
Hollywood Film Awards 2003 Outstanding Achievement in Acting Won
Hollywood Walk of Fame 2017 2,609th Star – Motion Picture Inducted
National Board of Review Awards 1997 Best Acting by an Ensemble (shared with the cast) The First Wives Club Won
National Society of Film Critics Awards 1981 Best Actress Private Benjamin Nominated
New York Film Critics Circle Awards 1981 Best Actress Runner-up
People's Choice Awards 1981 Favorite Motion Picture Actress (tied with Jane Fonda) Won
Primetime Emmy Awards 1969 Special Classification – Individuals Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In Nominated
1980 Outstanding Variety or Music Program Goldie and Liza Together Nominated
Rembrandt Awards 2008 Honorary Award Won
Satellite Awards 1997 Best Supporting Actress – Comedy or Musical Everyone Says I Love You Nominated
US Comedy Arts Festival 2006 AFI Star Award Won
Women in Film Crystal Awards 1997 Crystal Award Won

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