03 Dec Goldie Hawn – A Star Built on Laughter

Goldie Jeanne Hawn (born November 21, 1945) is an American actress, producer, dancer, and singer. She rose to fame on the NBC sketch comedy program Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In (1968–70), before going on to receive the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Cactus Flower (1969).

On the Laugh in show, she often broke out into high-pitched giggles in the middle of a joke, and deliver 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.

Hawn maintained bankable star status for more than three decades, while appearing 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 is the mother of actors Oliver Hudson, Kate Hudson, and Wyatt Russell.

Hawn was born in Washington, D.C. ^]the daughter of Laura (née Steinhoff; November 27, 1913 – November 27, 1993), a jewelry shop/dance school owner, and Edward Rutledge Hawn (September 28, 1908 – June 7, 1982), a band musician who played at major events in Washington. She was named after her mother’s aunt. She has one sister, entertainment publicist Patti Hawn (born March 24, 1938); their brother, Edward Jr. (born February 10, 1937) died as an infant shortly before Patti was conceived.

By 1964, she ran and taught in a ballet school, having dropped out of American University where she was majoring in drama. In 1964, Hawn 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

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. 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.

       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.

In 2018, Hawn cameoed as Mrs. Claus in the Netflix film The Christmas Chronicles. She will reprise the role in the film’s sequel, on Netflix in December 2020.

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 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.

Relationships and family

Hawn’s pre-fame boyfriends included actor Mark Goddard and crooner Spiro Venduras. Her first husband was dancer (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 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’s next romances were with French actor Yves Rénier television star Tom Selleck and Moroccan businessman Victor Drai The divorce from Hudson was finalized in March 1982.

Hawn has been in a relationship with actor 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 re-connecting on the set of Swing Shift.  Hawn attributes their lasting partnership with the decision to be together every day, not because a marriage license says so, but because they choose it.

They have a son, Wyatt (born July 10, 1986). Hawn is also the de facto stepmother of Russell and Season Hubley‘s son Boston. Hawn and Russell, who celebrated 37 years together in 2020, own homes in Vancouver, Snowmass, Manhattan, Santa Ynez Valley, Brentwood and Palm Desert.

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.  Net worth reported at $101 million