Biography of Goldie HawnGoldie Jean Hawn (born November 21, 1945) is an Academy Award-winning American actress, director and producer. She is best known for starring in popular film comedies of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
Hawn was born Goldie Jean Hawn in Washington, D.C., to Edward Rutledge Hawn (a band musician who played at major events in Washington) and Laura Steinhoff (a jewelery shop/ dance school owner); she has a sister, Patricia, and had a brother, Edward, who died before she was born. She was raised in Cumberland, Maryland. Her father, a descendant of Edward Rutledge (a signer of the Declaration of Independence), was a Presbyterian of English, German, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish descent. Her mother was Jewish - American, the daughter of Max Steinhoff and Fanny Weiss, immigrants from Hungary; Hawn was raised in the Jewish religion, although she attended church and the family did celebrate Christmas.
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 Stage Company production of Romeo and Juliet. By 1964, she ran and instructed 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.
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 2008, her last film appearance was in the 2002 runaway hit The Banger Sisters, opposite Susan Sarandon and Geoffrey Rush.
In 2005, Hawn's autobiography, A Lotus Grows in the Mud, was published. Hawn claims 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.
After her disastrous marriage to actor/director Gus Trikonis from 1969 to 1974 Hawn said she was not contemplating marriage again, even going as far to say in 1975 that: "I don't understand it." Although she seemed to change her mind a year later when she married Bill Hudson, of the Hudson Brothers, the two divorced in 1980 and have two children, Oliver (born 1976) and Kate Hudson (born 1979), both of whom are now noted actors.
Hawn has been in a relationship with actor Kurt Russell since 1983, when the two reconnected on the set of Swing Shift (they previously met while filming 1968's The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band). The couple have a son together, Wyatt Russell, born July 10, 1986, who lives in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, learning and playing hockey. Wyatt was a goalie with the Brampton Capitals of the Ontario Provincial Junior A Hockey League before starting college in 2007 and playing for the CHA Champion University of Alabama in Huntsville Chargers. She also is stepmother to Kurt Russell's son Boston. Hawn became a grandmother on January 7, 2004, when her daughter, Kate Hudson, gave birth to son Ryder Russell Robinson. She then became a grandmother for a second time when son, Oliver Hudson and his wife, actress Erinn Bartlett, welcomed their son Wilder Brooks Hudson, on August 23, 2007.
Hawn became involved in Eastern philosophy in 1972. She was raised Jewish but is now a practicing Buddhist and has raised her children in both Buddhist and Jewish traditions. She has stated on the Larry King Show that she is a Jewish Buddhist, but neither more Jewish nor more Buddhist. Even though she might have converted to Buddhism, she has said in an interview that she never had to forsake her Jewish heritage to embrace Buddhism. Goldie has also states, in several interviews, that her Jewish religion and heritage comes before Buddhism. Hawn travels to India annually, and has visited Israel, stating that she felt a strong identification with its people.
Hawn founded and funds the Goldie Hawn Institute, formerly called the Bright Lights Foundation. The institute 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. One school official reports that in one classroom, the children went from having the most behavioral problems, to having zero behavioral problems.
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."
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