Goldie Hawn

Goldie Jeanne Hawn (born November 21, 1945) is an American actress, film director, producer, and occasional singer, whose career has spanned more than four decades. Hawn is perhaps best known for her roles in Private Benjamin, Foul Play, Wildcats, Overboard, Bird on a Wire, Death Becomes Her, The First Wives Club, and The Banger Sisters. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the 1969 film Cactus Flower. She is also the mother of actors Oliver Hudson and Kate Hudson. Hawn has maintained a relationship with her long-time boyfriend, actor Kurt Russell, since 1983.
Hawn is a practicing Buddhist. She has also stated in interviews that her Jewish identity continues to be of great importance to her.
==Early life==
Hawn was born in Washington, D.C., the daughter of Laura (née Steinhoff), a jewelry shop/dance school owner, and Edward Rutledge Hawn, a band musician who played at major events in Washington. She was named after her mother's aunt.Stated in Hawn interview on Inside the Actors Studio, 2008 She has a sister, Patricia; a brother, Edward, who died before she was born. Through her father, Hawn is a direct descendant of Edward Rutledge, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence. Hawn was raised in Takoma Park, Maryland. Her father was Presbyterian and her mother was Jewish, the daughter of immigrants from Hungary; Hawn was raised in Judaism.Caldwell, Deborah. Goldie: Buddhist, Jew, Jesus Freak. Beliefnet.com.Goldie Hawn A Wallflower?, Mike Wallace Talks To Actress Goldie Hawn And Kurt Russell - CBS News
Hawn began taking ballet and tap dance lessons at the age of three, and danced in the chorus of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo production of The Nutcracker in 1955. She made her stage debut in 1961, playing Juliet in a Virginia Shakespeare Festival production of Romeo and Juliet. 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, who graduated from Montgomery Blair High School (class of 1963), 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.
==Career==
===1960s===
Hawn began her acting career as a cast member of the short-lived situation comedy 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 as one of the regular cast members on the 1968-1973 sketch comedy show, Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. On the show, she would often break 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 and painted body, Hawn personified something of a 1960s "It" girl.
Hawn's 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 had made her feature 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 fiancee.
===1970s===
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), as well as proving herself in the dramatic league with the satirical dramas The Girl from Petrovka, The Sugarland Express both in 1974 and 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 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, popular 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 prime-time Emmy. This came four months before the feature film release of Foul Play (with Chevy Chase), which became a box office smash and revived Hawn's career in the film industry. The plot centered around an innocent woman in San Francisco who becomes mixed up in a murder 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's popularity continued into the 1980s, starting off with another primetime variety special alongside actress and singer Liza Minnelli - Goldie and Liza Together (1980) - which went on to be nominated for four prime time Emmy's. Hawn furthermore established both her critical and commercial worth in Private Benjamin (1980), a comedy which not only starred Hawn but was also her foray into producing. Private Benjamin, which also starred Eileen Brennan and Armand Assante, garnered Hawn her second Academy Award nomination, this time for Best Actress. Hawn's box office success continued with an assortment of pictures, including comedies like Seems Like Old Times (1980), Protocol (1984) and Wildcats (1986) (Hawn also served as executive producer on the latter two) and dramas like Best Friends (1982) and Swing Shift (1984).
At the age of thirty-nine, Hawn posed for the cover of Playboy's January 1985 issue, which went on to be one of their highest selling issues. Hawn posed in a giant martini glass wearing nothing but a white collar shirt, a loosened black tie, and a pair of red stilettos. The headline read: "A SPARKLING PLAYBOY INTERVIEW WITH GOLDIE HAWN". Her last film of the 1980s was opposite partner Kurt Russell (for the third time) in the 1987 comedy Overboard, a critical and box office disappointment which questioned the likability and bankability of the two paired together onscreen.
===1990s===
Hawn's career slowed down after leaving Hollywood in the late 1980s, revived somewhat in 1990 with the action comedy Bird on a Wire, a critically panned but commercially successful picture that paired Hawn with action favorite Mel Gibson. Hawn had mixed success in the early 1990s, with the thriller Deceived (1991) and the drama CrissCross (1992). But her role opposite Bruce Willis and Meryl Streep in 1992's film Death Becomes Her garnered her much attention. Earlier that year, she starred in HouseSitter (1992), a screwball comedy with Steve Martin, which was a commercial and critical success. Hawn was absent from the screen again for four years, while caring for her mother whdied of cancer in 1994. Hawn made her entry back into the film business with producing the satirical comedy Something to Talk About starring Julia Roberts and Dennis Quaid, as well as making her foray into directing with 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 continued her tenure in the '90s with Woody Allen's musical Everyone Says I Love You (1996) and reuniting 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 not successful at the box office.
===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 run. As of 2010, her last film appearance was in The Banger Sisters (2002), opposite Susan Sarandon and Geoffrey Rush.
In 2005, Hawn's autobiography, A Lotus Grows in the Mud, was published. Hawn has said that the book is not a Hollywood tell-all, but rather a memoir and record of what she has learned in her life so far. Hawn announced in an interview with AARP's magazine that her next film project would be called Ashes to Ashes and co-star her partner Kurt Russell. The film is about a New York widow who loses her late husband's ashes in India. As of 2010 the project has yet to go into production.Griffin, Nancy. Goldie Luxe. AARP Magazine. March/April 2006.
==Personal life==
===Relationships and family===
Hawn's first husband was dancer (later director) Gus Trikonis, who appeared as a Shark in West Side Story; his sister Gina played Graciella, Riff's girlfriend. Her second husband was Bill Hudson, of the Hudson Brothers, but the two divorced in 1980. They have two children, Oliver Hudson (born 1976) and Kate Hudson (born 1979), both of whom are now actors.
Hawn has been in a relationship with actor Kurt Russell since 1983, when the two met again on the set of Swing Shift (they had previously met while filming 1968's The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band). The couple have a son, Wyatt Russell (born July 10, 1986), who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Hawn is stepmother to Kurt Russell's son Boston and she became a grandmother on January 7, 2004, when her daughter, Kate Hudson, gave birth to son Ryder Russell Robinson. Hawn became a grandmother for a second time when her son, Oliver Hudson and his wife, actress Erinn Bartlett had a son Wilder Brooks Hudson, on August 23, 2007.
===Religion===
Hawn became involved in Eastern philosophy in 1972. She is a practicing Buddhist and has raised her children in both Buddhist and Jewish traditions. She stated on the Larry King Show that she is a Jewish Buddhist, but neither more Jewish nor more Buddhist;Goldie Hawn Interview. Larry King at CNN.com. 24 February 2006. in interviews, she also detailed that she never had to forsake her Jewish heritage to embrace Buddhism and that her Jewish religion and heritage come before Buddhism.Celebrity Buddhist - Buddhism Hawn travels to India annually, and has visited Israel, stating that she felt a strong identification with its people. She has been criticized for lending her support for Israel and for the Jewish National Fund.Protestors heckle Goldie Hawn at Scots charity event - The Scotsman In 1997, she was one of a number of Hollywood stars and executives to sign an open letter to then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, published as a newspaper advertisement in the International Herald Tribune, which protested the treatment of Scientologists in Germany.Bonfante, Jordan; van Voorst, Bruce (1997-02-10). "Does Germany Have Something Against These Guys?", Time
Hawn founded and funds the The Hawn Foundation,American Psychological Association Goldie Hawn shines light on children's mental health which teaches the Buddhist technique of Mindfulness training; where fourth through seventh graders are instructed in mindful awareness techniques and positive thinking skills, then tested for changes in behavior, social and emotional competence, and moral development. A study indicated that children who participated in the program increased significantly in the areas of optimism, positive and negative emotions; the study was not peer reviewed and paid for by the organization.Details on Goldie Hawn's organization, The Hawn Foundation
Hawn has been in negotiation with the Conservative Party to set up a school in Britain where her MindUp technique would be taught.The Sunday Times Goldie Hawn plans UK school. February 14, 2010.
Hawn realizes that many parents oppose bringing Buddhist methods into public schools, and recently stated in Greater Good magazine, published by Greater Good Science Center: "There will always be people who see this as scary, or as some kind of Eastern philosophy that they don't want for their kids." Hawn adds, Mindfulness gives kids a tool for understanding how their brain works, for having more self-control."
==Filmography==
Year	Film 	Role 	Other notes
1968	The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band	Giggly Girl 	Credited as Goldie Jeanne.
1969	Cactus Flower 	Toni Simmons 	Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
Nominated- BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role
1970	There's a Girl in My Soup 	Marion 	Nominated- BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role Nominated- Golden Laurel Award for Best Comedy Performance, Female
1971	$ 	Dawn Divine 	aka Dollars
1972	Butterflies Are Free 	Jill Tanner 	Nominated- Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1974	The Sugarland Express 	Lou Jean Poplin 	
1974	The Girl from Petrovka 	Oktyabrina 	
1975	Shampoo 	Jill 	Nominated- Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1976	The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox 	Amanda Quaid/Duchess Swansbury	Nominated- Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1978	Foul Play 	Gloria Mundy 	Nominated- Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1979	Lovers and Liars 	Anita 	
1980	Private Benjamin 	Pvt. Judy Benjamin/Goodman 	Nominated- Academy Award for Best Actres Nominated- Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1980	Seems Like Old Times 	Glenda Gardenia Parks 	
1982	Best Friends 	Paula McCullen 	Nominated- Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1984	Swing Shift 	Kay Walsh 	
1984	Protocol 	Sunny Davis 	
1986	Wildcats 	Molly McGrath 	
1987	Overboard 	Joanna Stayton/Annie Proffitt 	
1990	Bird on a Wire 	Marianne Graves 	
1991	Deceived 	Adrienne Saunders 	
1992	CrissCross 	Tracy Cross 	
1992	HouseSitter 	Gwen Phillips 	
1992	Death Becomes Her 	Helen Sharp 	
1996	The First Wives Club 	Elise Elliot 	National Board of Review Award for Best Cast
Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Favorite Actress - Comedy
1996	Everyone Says I Love You 	Steffi Dandridge 	Nominated- Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture
1999	The Out-of-Towners 	Nancy Clark 	
2001	Town & Country 	Mona Miller 	Nominated- Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actress
2002	The Banger Sisters 	Suzette 	Nominated- Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
2010	Ashes to Ashes 	 	Filming
=== Television ===
Year 	Title 	Role 	Notes
1967–1968	Good Morning, World 	Sandy Kramer 	
1968–1970	Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In	Herself - Regular Performer	Nominated- Emmy Award for Special Classification of an Outstanding Program and Individual Achievement (1969)
Nominated- Emmy Award for Special Classification of an Outstanding Program and Individual Achievement (1970)
==References==
==External links==
* The Hawn Foundation
* 
* Goldie Hawn at the Turner Classic Movies Database
* Goldie Hawn at TV.com
===Interviews===
* Goldie on Giving TV Goldie Hawn speaking about The Hawn Foundation
* USA Today interview (May 4, 2005)
* CBS News interview (May 1, 2005)
* BBC Films interview (January 17, 2003)
Category:Buddhist women
Category:Celebrity Buddhists
Category:People of Jewish Descent
Category:Living people