Goldie Hawn
Template:Short description Template:Use American English Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox person
Goldie Jeanne Hawn (born November 21, 1945) is an American actress, producer, dancer, and singer.<ref name="biography.com">Template:Cite web</ref> She achieved stardom and acclaim for playing lighthearted comedic roles in film and television. In a career spanning six decades, she has received several awards including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for a BAFTA Award and two Primetime Emmy Awards.
She rose to fame on the NBC sketch comedy program Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1968–1970). She made her screen debut in a minor role the western comedy The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (1968), before going on to receive the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture for her comedic role in Cactus Flower (1969). She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, playing a woman who enlists for the army in the comedy Private Benjamin (1980).
Hawn has also starred in such comedy 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). 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. She has been in a relationship with Kurt Russell since 1983. In 2003, she founded the Hawn Foundation, which educates underprivileged children.
Early life
[edit]Hawn was born in Washington, D.C.<ref name="biography.com"/> 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 signatory of the Declaration of Independence.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> She was named after her mother's aunt.<ref name=actors>Stated in Hawn interview on Inside the Actors Studio, 2008</ref> 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 growing up.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Her father was a Presbyterian of German and English descent. Her mother was Jewish, the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Hungary.<ref name="BBCinterview">Template:Cite video</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Hawn was raised Jewish<ref name="actors"/><ref name="BBCinterview"/><ref name="belief">Hawn in Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> in Takoma Park, Maryland,<ref name= interviewmag2017>Template:Cite news</ref> and attended Montgomery Blair High School in nearby Silver Spring, Maryland.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
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.<ref>"'Romeo and Juliet' Performance a Hit," Daily Press (Newport News, Virginia), August 18, 1964.</ref>
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<ref name="actors"/> and at the Peppermint Box in New Jersey.<ref name= interviewmag2017/>
Career
[edit]1966–1969: Breakthrough and acclaim
[edit]
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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=interviewmag2017/> 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.<ref name=actors/>
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.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>
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.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
1970–1989: Comedy stardom
[edit]
After Hawn's Academy Award win, her film career took off. She starred in a string of 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".<ref name="amg_record_review">Template:Cite web</ref>
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:
Private Benjamin also stars Eileen Brennan and Armand Assante and garnered Hawn her second Academy Award nomination, this time for Best Actress.<ref name=actors/><ref>Template:Cite webTemplate:Cbignore</ref> 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 PlayboyTemplate:'s January 1985 issue and was the subject of the Playboy Interview.<ref>Hawn on the cover of Playboy magazine, January 1985</ref> Her last film of the 1980s was opposite partner Kurt Russell, for the third time, in the comedy Overboard (1987).
1990–2002: Established star and hiatus
[edit]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.<ref name=actors/> 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.<ref name=actors/> 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In 1999, she was awarded Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.<ref>Review of Town & Country, Rotten Tomatoes</ref> 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.
2013–present: Career resurgence
[edit]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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 2018, Hawn cameoed as Mrs. Claus in the Netflix film The Christmas Chronicles.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> She played Mrs. Claus again, in a leading role, in its 2020 sequel The Christmas Chronicles 2.
Personal life
[edit]Beliefs and views
[edit]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."<ref>Goldie Hawn happiness and meditation tips, Prevention</ref> 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."<ref>Template:Cite AV media</ref>
Marriages and family
[edit]
Early relationships
[edit]Hawn's pre-fame boyfriends included actor Mark Goddard and singer Spiro Venduras.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Her first husband was dancer (later director) Gus Trikonis, who appeared as a Shark gang member in West Side Story. They married on May 16, 1969, and separated on April 9, 1973.<ref>Lyse, John (July 27, 1969). Super Stardom Forecast for Goldie Hawn. Toledo Blade.</ref><ref name="SAE">Template:Cite news</ref> Hawn then dated stuntman Ted Grossman,<ref name="closeup">Beck, Marilyn (January 16, 1974). Hollywood CloseupTemplate:Dead link, The Milwaukee Journal; accessed May 4, 2017.</ref> Swedish actor Bruno Wintzell<ref name="closeup"/> and Italian actor Franco Nero,<ref>Jack O'Brian (September 8, 1975). Goldie and Vanessa's Oldie. Lebanon Daily News</ref> 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.<ref name="people">Armstrong, Lois (May 17, 1976). She's Golden: With Motherhood and a New Husband on the Way, Life Is a Laugh-In for Goldie Hawn Template:Webarchive, People; accessed May 4, 2017.</ref> Hawn was granted a divorce in June 1976 and married Hudson on July 3 in Takoma Park, Maryland, where she grew up.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Hawn subsequently had romances with French actor Yves Rénier<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and Moroccan businessman Victor Drai.<ref>Sloan, Robin Adams (December 24, 1981). "Hawn, businessman have close ties". Dayton Daily News. p. 2.</ref> The divorce from Hudson was finalized in March 1982.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Kurt Russell
[edit]Hawn has been in a relationship with Kurt Russell since Valentine's Day 1983.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The couple first met while filming The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band in 1967, but became involved after reconnecting on the set of Swing Shift. They have a son together, Wyatt (born July 10, 1986).<ref>Template:Cite newsTemplate:Dead link</ref> In 2000 and again in 2004, news outlets reported that Hawn and Russell were on the verge of breaking up.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> During the alleged separations, Hawn was linked to newsman Charles Glass and Pakistani former cricketer and former Prime Minister, Imran Khan.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Hawn and Russell, who celebrated 40 years together in 2023, own homes in Canada (Vancouver),<ref name="auto">Template:Cite news</ref> Colorado (Snowmass),<ref name="auto1">Template:Cite web</ref> New York (Manhattan),<ref name="auto2">Template:Cite web</ref> and California (Santa Ynez Valley,<ref name="auto4"/> Brentwood,<ref name="auto3">Template:Cite web</ref> and Palm Desert<ref name="auto4">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>File:A house in Palm Springs, California, that was once the winter home of Hollywood movie stars Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell LCCN2013631260.tif</ref>). Hawn has said 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
The Hawn Foundation
[edit]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".<ref>About Us Template:Webarchive, The Hawn Foundation</ref><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> The Hawn Foundation has supported research studies conducted by external researchers to evaluate the effectiveness of its educational program for children, called MindUP.<ref name="Mindfulness">Template:Cite journal</ref>
Filmography
[edit]Film
[edit]Television
[edit]| 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 | Hope | Template:N/A | Director / executive producer; Television film |
| Space Ghost Coast to Coast | Herself | ||
| 2001 | When Billie Beat Bobby | Template:N/A | Executive producer; Television Film |
| 2002 | The Matthew Shepard Story | Template:N/A | |
| 2013 | Phineas and Ferb | Peggy McGee | Voice; Episode: "Thanks But No Thanks", "Troy Story" |
| 2022 | Gutsy | Herself |
Awards and nominations
[edit]Discography
[edit]Albums
[edit]- 1972, Goldie, Reprise Records: MS 2061
Singles
[edit]- 1972, "Pitta Patta", Reprise Records: REP 1126 (directed by Van Dyke Parks)
- 1972, "Carey", Reprise Records: K14211 U.K Issue
- 1997, "You Don't Own Me", Columbia Records: XPCD842 (with Bette Midler and Diane Keaton)
References
[edit]Further reading
[edit]External links
[edit]Template:Commons category Template:Wikiquote
- Template:IMDb name
- Template:Tcmdb name
- Goldie Hawn at discogs.com
- The Hawn Foundation
- Goldie Hawn interview on BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs, September 23, 2012
Videos
- "Hawn: From 'Cactus Flower' to 'Lotus'" USA Today (May 4, 2005)
- "Goldie Hawn a Wallflower?" 60 Minutes. CBS News (May 1, 2005)
- Template:Cite news
- Pages with broken file links
- 1945 births
- Living people
- 20th-century American actresses
- 20th-century American Jews
- 20th-century American singers
- 20th-century American women singers
- 21st-century American actresses
- 21st-century American Jews
- American people of English descent
- American people of German descent
- Actresses from Maryland
- Actresses from Washington, D.C.
- American female dancers
- American film actresses
- American memoirists
- American musical theatre actresses
- American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent
- American sketch comedians
- American stage actresses
- American television actresses
- American women comedians
- American women memoirists
- Best Supporting Actress Academy Award winners
- Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (film) winners
- Comedians from Maryland
- Comedians from Washington, D.C.
- Hudson family (show business)
- Jewish American actresses
- Jewish American comedians
- Jewish women comedians
- Jewish American film people
- Jewish women singers
- American LGBTQ rights activists
- People from Silver Spring, Maryland
- People from Takoma Park, Maryland
- Rutledge family
- Singers from Maryland
- Singers from Washington, D.C.