Kate Hudson – Who knew then she’d still be going strong twenty years later

September 2000 By Philip Berk

Second generations are in.

George W. was elected president

Jeff Bridges, Michael Douglas, and George Clooney were all Golden Globe nominees

But far away the leader of the pack is Kate Hudson, Goldie Hawn’s look-alike daughter.

I was surprised that neither Goldie nor Kurt Russell were there when she won her Golden Globe as best supporting actress for Almost Famous. 

I asked Kurt his reaction when he found out she had won.

“My great thrill in life is my family. So I’m really proud off Kate. I’m proud of all of our kids. I’ve spent most of my life with my kids, and they’re great. They have a wonderful outlook on life. They all have a focus, direction, they’re happy, and they’re not people who live under Kurt and Goldie’s shadow.”

Kate shares the sentiment. 

“I was raised by Kurt since I was three. I spent a lot of time being very bitter about my real father. Six months ago we spoke to each other and we’ve been talking ever since but I hardly remembered him at all. I think of Bill (Hudson) as the man who made me, but Kurt will always be my father.”

If Kurt can take some credit for her, he deserves a big hand.

Not only is she one of the most self assured and personable young actresses of her generation, she appears to have inherited her mom’s looks and talent.

And to think she almost didn’t get the part in Almost Famous.

Writer-director Cameron Crowe had signed Canadian actress Sarah Polley for the role of Penny Lane, but when she backed out (she didn’t see herself as ‘someone who lights up a room’) Cameron went with Kate who had tested for the role but had been given the role of the sister.

The rest, of course, is history.

Even more ironic is Kate’s change of status.

She’s gone from bachelor girl to rock star wife, having recently married Chris Robinson, the lead singer of the Black Crowes.

Both incidentally are Jewish (on their mothers’ side) but they were married in a Buddhist ceremony.

So what can she say about him?

“He’s a very honest, beautiful man. I am so lucky to have met him. Obviously because I come from two parents who aren’t married, we were in no rush to get married. He gave me an engagement ring only because he wanted to give me something that was a symbol of our commitment. We really had no plans of getting married but then we went ahead and it was so beautiful.”

Goldie always knew Kate would be a star — that much she’s told us — but when did she (Kate) first realize she wanted to be actress?

“Actually I was very young when I realized I wanted to act. And you’re right. My family knew before I did. I think I was eleven when I went to my mom and said, I want to act. And she went, ‘Whoa, whoa, hold on. You’re eleven, be a kid first.’ But then she got me involved in theatre. She put me into the Santa Monica Playhouse. In school I did a lot of theatre, and then I went to the Williamstown Theatre Festival, which is a wonderful summer program in Boston. But it was not till I was sixteen that I went to my first audition and I’ve been busy ever since.”

Is music equally important in her life?

“It’s always been a huge part of my life.There’s something about it that moves your soul. I can be very dramatic; so there are times when I’m sad that I just want to be sadder. So you put on a great Bob Dylan song, and it moves you to a place that you couldn’t get to any other way.”

Does she sing? 

“I love to sing. And I’ve picked up the guitar since doing this movie. It inspired me, but I’ve always written. I’ve always written poetry, so I’ve been able to take some of the stuff I’d written and put it to music. I guess I have a little but of music in  me. My grandfather was a professional violinist so it’s always been there.”

Playing a groupie in the movie and then falling in love with a rock star, is there is a parallel?

“I met Chris after I made the movie so my first impulse was, Do I want to go there? I wasn’t experienced with this world, but I had learned from Cameron how music can be your life and when it comes from your soul and you live with it every day, it can be incredible. So it was easy to fall in love with Chris.”

Was she familiar with his music?

“Growing up, I was more into classic rock because of my dad Kurt. We’d go to school and he’d be playing Rolling Stones or ZZ Topp, so I was a big rolling Stones fan when I was little. I used to tell my mom, ‘If I ever meet Mick Jagger, hold me back.’ That was when I was eleven. But then as I got older I realized Keith Richards was much cooler, and then I got a chance to meet him and I was on air. I still am every time I get to meet people I admire. I’ve always admired people who stand up for what they believe in. Jessica Lange for instance. And Bob Dylan — his poetry is genius. I admire his greatly.”

Both Dylan and Kate won Golden Globes this year and could well repeat at the Academy Awards.

Because of her background, is she inured to fame?

“Not at all. In fact, when we made Dr. T and the Women in Dallas, we were staying in this mall and I  was doing some shopping there. I gave my credit card to the girl behind the counter, and  suddenly she started screaming, and I was like, ‘Whoa, wait a minute. It’s okay.’ She’s like, I knew it was you. And it was really bizarre. That was the first time it ever happened to me, so I just sat and talked to her for five minutes, and it was cool. I think I made her as comfortable as possible, and she was comfortable.”

For most people, she’s her mother’s daughter. 

How does she see herself?

“Surprisingly as someone who can be tough. I stand up for what I believe in. It’s very tempting to take things just for the money, but that’s not why I’m in this business. I want to do things I feel passionate about, work with people I admire.”

Is she really that tough?

“Ask the people who know me. But I also like to have a good time and enjoy life.” 

What is the best advice her mom gave her? 

“I was traveling back from a film in Ireland. I was feeling really tired, disoriented, I didn’t know what I was doing. I spoke to my mom on the phone, and she said, ‘Whenever this happens to you, just close your eyes and squint them really small, try to look at the world really small, as if you’re looking at it for the first time.’ And that’s sort of how I try to live my life. Just be honest with yourself and what you believe in and what you do. If you’re honest you’ll never get burned.”  

Did she have second thoughts about playing a Lesbian in Dr. T?

“I have lots of Lesbian friends and lots of gay friends. So I had absolutely no problem with it. I was so excited to put my lips on LIv (Tyler’s) lips, you know what I mean. It’s like, who cares. I’m comfortable with my sexuality. And there is a strength in being able to come out of the closet. It’s a difficult thing to do; I admire it immensely. But I had no problem or fears about it. I loved it. It was great.”

Any fear of marrying a rock musician twelve years her senior?

“I don’t think of him as being older. He’s the man I live with, spend every day with.”

Any fear of his being surrounded by groupies?

“Black Crowes are a different type of band, very old school. They still travel by bus. They’re not into planes and money. And they love their music. They live their music everyday. They’re like a 70’s rock band . They don’t sell out to MTV crowds. They’re there because they love music.” 

THREE YEARS LATER

                               By Philip Berk

When you have two famous parents who’ve been together for twenty years, what do they say when you tell them you want to marry a rock star thirteen years your senior?

Which is what happened to Kate Hudson when she surprised her mom Goldie Hawn and her father Kurt Russell with the news that she was in love with Chris Robinson, lead singer of the rock group Black Crowes.

Goldie’s response was, “What could I say? She fell in love. I know what that felt like and I was not going to be the one to tell her anything because I don’t know anything. All I know is that when you fall in love and want to get married, you should. And there is nothing like being able to marry a first love. Life is an accumulation of experiences and I was happy for her.”

Kurt’s response was a little more surprising,

“I was never ever, ever concerned about Kate with boys. I was more concerned about them. I would say to them, ‘Listen, this might be a tough ride, buddy, and you might be in for a little more than you bit off.’ And I was serious. Katie has always known how  to take care of herself; so I looked forward to meeting Chris, looking him in the eye and saying, ‘Hang on babe, this is going to be a helluva ride, and for however long it lasts I can guarantee you’re going to have a great time.’ But I was pleased when I  met him because I don’t know if I’ve ever met a guy as charming. I think he’s terrific. He’s his own man. We agree on a lot and disagree on a lot, but what we agree on mostly is his general outlook on life and the way it should be lived, which I’ve learned to appreciate. So I welcomed him into the family.”

Ironically neither seemed concerned about Chris’s reputation as the poster child for legalizing marijuana.

When asked about it, Kate is unfazed.

“You ought to be able to live your life any way you want,” she answers. “Everybody knows he’s a pot smoker. That’s not news. I’ve never condoned that type of lifestyle. But when it comes to hard drugs and all that, it’s all left our life.”

Even though she played a promiscuous teenager in Almost Famous, off screen she personifies the all American innocent.

It was that role that won her a Golden Globe Award and an Oscar nomination.

Ever since she’s worked non stop, making some pretty bad choices along the way.

Her latest How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is one, as was last year’s Four Feathers, in which she was woefully miscast.

But the film opened to huge box-office in the U.S. confounding critics.

And things are looking up for her. Next she’ll be seen in Le Divorce from Merchant-Ivory, Aex and Emma from Rob Reiner, and Raising Helen from Gary Marshal, who directed her parents in Overboard.

At her press conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills for How to Lose a Guy, she looks radiant, almost incandescent, the look of someone in love.

So how is married life treating her? I ask her.

“Our relationship and marriage is beautiful and gets better every day,” she replies.

How do they handle separation?

“It’s hard sometimes when I go on location and he goes on tour, and even when I’m home and shooting in Los Angeles and he’s out of town, I’m unable to go see him.”

So how does she keep the passion alive?

“My parents are a wonderful example because they’re twenty years together, not married but together. My parents always said that when you stop having fun, you’re in trouble, and that also means in some of the hardest situations, if it doesn’t make you passionate anymore, it’s dying.”

What else is important?

“For me respect is a big part of keeping a relationship together. Honoring the other person, what they do, what they stand for, letting them be that way, and not trying to change them. But relationships always involve work. When I come home from a long day of work, I might just want to slump down on the couch and watch television, but I know that I want to make my husband happy, so I’ll cook him dinner if he wants, and that makes me happy. It’s important to make those kinds of efforts. And when you stop wanting to do that, you’re in trouble.”

What about humor? 

“Absolutely. A sense of humor is important, being able to laugh in the worse possible situations. Sometimes I find myself in an argument with Chris and he’ll look at me in a certain way and I’ll burst into laughter because he’s so damn funny. Relationships are funny. Love is funny.”

Why did they choose marriage as opposed to her parents’ commitment?

“I’ve always been the kind of person who just dives into things without thinking about it.  But I don’t think of my parents as not being married just because they didn’t have a ceremony. When we were young — I was three at the time — my dad gave my mom that ring that she wears on her finger. With that ceremony basically he was saying that he loves my mother and that he was there for our family. He used Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as a metaphor, but I won’t tell you why. 

“And by the way, my marriage was not a traditional wedding. My mother was the one who coordinated it. We had sixty of our closest friends there. We were married by Ute Native Americans, and it was more about the union of us than making a statement that we were getting married. It was more about bringing our families together and saying that Chris and I will be committed hopefully for the rest of our lives. I  honestly believe that will be the case. I can’t imagine my life without him.”   

Kurt, rather than her birth father, comedian Bill Hudson, gave her away?

Was that ever a problem?

“Not for a minute. Kurt’s my dad. He raised me since I was three. I spent a lot of time being very bitter about my real father. But we are now very friendly and see each other a lot. But I will always think of Bill as the man who made me, but Kurt as my father.”

Kurt thinks the world of Chris. What does she like best about him? 

“His honesty.”

“I guess it was. We met, and I moved in four days later. We called each other all the time. We told each other we loved each other all the time. We wrote each other letters. We did everything you could possibly do wrong (referring to the premise of her movie How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.) But I think it was because he was at a point in his life that he thought he’d never marry and I was in New York having a great old time with my girlfriends never thinking about a relationship that it happened. It came to both of us at that perfect time, it just happened perfectly, we fell in love, we were obsessed with each other, I guess it was love at first sight.” 

For most people, she’s thought of as her mother’s clone.

Are there differences and what are they?

“My mom is more complaisant. I’m more feisty. I like to get my point across, sometimes too much. I like to argue and debate with my brothers and my dad and friends. My mother teaches me compassion and ease and letting things go, which is good. But I’m a completely different person than my mother. I admire her. She’s my role model. I always looked up to her as a child, but we are different.” 

AND A YEAR LATER

“Kate has a good head on her shoulders, and she pretty much makes decisions for herself. Kate is going to have children and a family and a life and a career, and she is going to do all of it extremely well. She’ll do great.”

Those were Goldie Hawn’s prophetic words about her now equally famous daughter Kate Hudson, whose first movie since the birth of her baby is Raising Helen in which she plays a career women who has to take over the rearing of three orphaned kids. 

In New York for the press junket, by her own admission, she’s a little flustered. 

And wouldn’t you be!

She’s flown in from New Orleans where she’s been filming Skeleton Key; her mind is on her new baby and her husband Chris  Robinson of the Black Crowes, who’s on the road.

It’s only four months since she gave birth to Ryder Russell Robinson.

She gained sixty pounds during the pregnancy but now she’s lost most of it. 

How is she handing motherhood? I ask her

“So far, so good. He is such a good baby. He hardly ever cries. The only time he gets fussy is when he’s hungry. I’ve never been good at talking about myself, she volunteers, “and it’s even worse now because he’s all I can think about.” 

Obviously she has plenty of help?

“I’ve got an excellent nanny and incredible friends. And of course my parents and my brothers. He’s got great uncles. So everything is really good.”

How has it changed her relationship with Chris?

“I’ve never been more in love with him, ever, now that we have a child together. Being alone with each other is difficult,” she jokes,  “but what we’ve created is so enormous. We are so happy. We look at this baby — when you really love somebody and you come together and you make a family —  you’re  suddenly aware of  your capacity to love something. I never thought I could love Chris any more than I did, but then you have a child and you go, Wow. It just enhanced everything.”.

No downside. 

“There are difficulties, like I was listening to one of his songs and I went, ‘How are you gonna explain this to our son? How are you going to explain what you’re saying here to our son?’ But the one thing I love about Chris is that he has never lied about who he is. He is very honest with his past and everything he stands for. And that’s who I married! It’s very similar to my mom and my pa (actor Kurt Russell) because their politics are so opposite, even their belief system couldn’t  be further apart. And yet it works.”

Goldie and Kurt have been together for twenty years.

He’s a Libertarian, she’s a liberal Democrat.

Chris of course is known for his advocacy of legalizing marijuana.

Asked about it, she once told me, “You ought to be able to live your life any way you want. Everybody knows he’s a pot smoker. That’s not news. I’ve never condoned that type of lifestyle. But when it comes to hard drugs and all that, it’s all left our life.”

This time she adds, “My husband and I live in very different worlds, which is part of me that I struggle with all the time. He is against corporations. He would never sell a song for a commercial. He feels rock ‘n roll doesn’t mean what it used to mean. He believes in the power of the message, and it’s just so numb right now.  These are the things we love to talk about.”

What surprised her most about becoming a mother?

“I loved being pregnant. I was never happier. I could be pregnant all the time. I like eating. I gained sixty pounds. I was jolly. I laughed harder than I ever laughed. Feeling him inside of me, I let go of myself and said, ‘Okay. I am not about me anymore. I’m about carrying the baby. And so just enjoy it.’ Even when I was the most uncomfortable, I relished it because I knew that once he came out he no longer belonged to me anymore. He would his own person.  I really thought I had prepared myself for that even when he came out and I saw that little face. But then when I got home, I realized how completely unprepared I was. We were in the middle of  remodeling our home. We had just moved into this house. We had no furniture. We had a bed and a rocking chair. And no crib. We just had a Moses basket, and a couch in the living room. And then my mother came, and was like, ‘You need furniture.’ And she got a few more pieces cause I had nothing. I was so unprepared. At which point I thought to myself, I can understand why people have difficulties being parents because somehow you don’t have the tools to love something like that. You don’t know how to incorporate that kind of love into yourself and to accept that something matters more than you do.”

So how did she pull through?

“I had a c-section, so I had to be in bed for two, three weeks. All of a sudden your room becomes this dark hole, and you have to get out of there. And I’m taking the baby. I need sun. You’ve got to get out. I was definitely not prepared, and that’s when I had that little moment of postpartum where I said, I really have to start getting out and seeing the world because you get so sucked into the baby that you forget that life is going on around you everywhere.”

Is that why she returned to work so soon?

“I’m a real believer in taking time away from work because when you come back to it, you’re just so fresh. You feel so good and you’re ready to delve into whatever it is you’re doing. Now with  the baby everything else seems so unimportant; it almost makes you fearless because who cares! It’s like, ‘Why not give it everything,” 

How was she able to lose all that weight?

“Losing weight was hard for me because I had to start filming two and a half months after Ryder was born. So after the six weeks when I couldn’t do anything I started working out two to three hours a day. I kind of felt, ‘This is a pain in the ass. I wish I had a little more time,’  but I didn’t want to have to lose the weight drastically; so I dedicated myself to it. And it was fantastic to dedicate yourself to your body and eating right.”

Is she still breast feeding?

‘I am, but it’s very hard. It’s very difficult while you’re working. So it’s been emotional; cause you want to play with your baby between takes, but then all you’re doing is just feeding the baby when you have time off on the set.” 

Does Chris help?

“He’s on tour now, but when he’s not he’ll do night feeding so that I can sleep. And he changes diapers. He’s a hands-on full-on daddy. He loves it. And he likes to do drum sounds, and the baby loves it. And he sings the most beautiful songs to him. Lucky boy!”

Will they have more children?

“Oh, yeah. Absolutely!”

And will she continue to work?

“I like what I do, and I don’t want to stop doing it. And if it went away, I’d miss the work part. Everything else I’d be happy to say goodbye to. The fame and all that. I grew up in it. I grew up with my parents being famous. It was difficult at times. It took time away from us, but my parents were amazing. They never let it get too close to us. And it wasn’t what interested me about what I do. What interested me was the make believe.”

How ambitious is she?

“When you can truly say that you can walk away from it and all the things that come with it and that you’re more interested in the work, that says it all I guess. I mean people come up to me and say ‘God, you’re so real.’ One part of me goes, ‘Yeh, I got nothing to hide.’ I mean I’m just who I am. And the other part says, ‘How sad that that’s surprising to people.” So I don’t know.  I’m ambitious as far as my work. Everything else, I just want to live a happy and peaceful life.”

In Raising Helen she falls in love with a Lutheran minister (played by John Corbett) Has she ever been attracted to a man of the cloth?

“Interesting. Oh my goodness, No.” 

After reflection, she adds, “I have a little bit of a problem with the ‘Okay, I can go out and do as many drugs and screw as many women as I want, and Jesus will forgive me.’ I’m not a fan of organized religion or people involved in organized religion or cults. I mean, look who I married.”

But she’s not an atheist?

“Not at all. i believe in what God  is, what energy is, but I don’t believe in anything organized except I’m Jewish and that’s part of my growing up.”

Helen’s other problem is disciplining her “adopted” family. Like the kids in the movie, did she know how to bend the rules?

“We were excellent at it, but I got away with much less than my brothers because I was the girl; so I had the short end of the stick. Oliver (Hudson, her brother)  got away with everything.  But all kids just know how to manipulate their parents a little bit.” 

What can she tell us about Skeleton Key?

“Actually it’s a whole different  process for me. It’s a thriller. I’ve been doing a lot of being dragged around, tied, and gagged. It’s excellent”

For the record this is how Kurt views their longterm prospects. 

“I think theirs is a wonderful, fun, volatile relationship. I just hope it lasts for as long as they keep it fun. If it does, great. They are a great couple. Look if you meet Chris, spend some time with him, and don’t fall in love with him,  there’s something wrong with you. It’s like Goldie, it’s like Kate. “