She’s got talent, charm, drive and beauty, but is Kate Hudson as eternally happy as she seems? She talks to Sanjiv Bhattacharya about family, friends and her pursuit of happiness.
It’s all go at actress Kate Hudson’s house this morning. The gardeners are pruning out back, her nanny is checking on a cake in the oven, and her personal assistant is coordinating schedules with her business assistant.
“It’s always like this,” says Hudson, 38, beckoning me to her dining table. She looks as you imagine – summery and beaming, in a flowery dress. Only today, she’s a tad pixie-ish, what with her buzz-cut hair (don’t be fooled by the wig in the photographs: she shaved it for the Sia-directed movie Sister). “Without Team Kate, I’d be screwed. I’m a single mom of two!”
There’s a lot to juggle: two books, Pretty Happy and Pretty Fun, both out now; her activewear line, Fabletics; and, oh yes, movies – Hudson still makes those, too. She’s currently on a publicity tour for Marshall, a gritty courtroom drama based on the life of civil-rights hero Thurgood Marshall. Then there are her sons – Ryder, 13, from her marriage to former Black Crowes singer Chris Robinson; and Bingham, six, whose dad is Muse frontman Matt Bellamy. Does grandma help out with the logistics? Hudson bursts out laughing. “She’s not the kind of grandma you can call, like, ‘Hey, Mom, can you watch the kids?’” she says. “Are you kidding? She’s in India with her foundation or New York on a speaking engagement. She’s always working.”
Mom is, of course, actress Goldie Hawn; longtime partner of actor Kurt Russell, whom Hudson considers her father (her biological dad, Bill Hudson, left when she was one). And although her parents aren’t around to babysit, their presence in her life is… “Huge!” She laughs. “You have no idea.”
At one point, around the time Almost Famous was released in 2000 – earning Hudson an Oscar nomination at the age of 21 – she avoided talking about her parents. “I wanted the work to speak for itself,” she says. “But now, honestly, there’s nothing I love talking about more than my family.”
This house, for instance, was originally Hawn’s; she bought it when she was pregnant with Kate, who ran around as a toddler while a Who’s Who of Hollywood visted. “I won’t namedrop, but just think of all the movies they were in, from Shampoo to Tequila Sunrise to…” she says. “Everyone came through here. We’re a very open-door family.” So: Warren Beatty, Sylvester Stallone, Meryl Streep, Michelle Pfeiffer…? “All I’ll say is, when you’re little, you don’t realize. But now I’m like: wow, that’s an impressive guest list.”
The house has always had a party reputation. In the 1930s, it belonged to Frankenstein director James Whale. “He had parties all the time. Ronald Reagan was here, Bette Davis... But my parents’ parties weren’t decked out to the nines like that. It was just, ‘Come on over and grab something from the fridge.’ Very casual.”
Neither Hawn nor Russell came from money. So they raised Hudson, her brother Oliver and half-brother Wyatt to appreciate hard work – not unlike designer Stella McCartney, one of Hudson’s best friends. “We talk about that a lot, about friends we have, like, ‘I can’t believe their parents [bought] them that...’”
The family moved around a bit when Hudson was young, spending years on a ranch in Colorado. “One of my favorite memories is watching Kurt break in horses,” she says. “He’s quite the cowboy, and he had this horse, Big Red, who was wild. So, every morning, he’d wake early and go work the horse, and I’d sit on a fence and watch.”
By her teens, though, they had moved back to the Pacific Palisades, where she could have easily gone the route of so many privileged Hollywood kids. But she wasn’t so inclined: she spent her time with her soccer team or singing and dancing.
“I was a very focused little girl. I didn’t rebel from my parents because I wanted validation from them,” she says. “I never came home with a piercing or a tattoo; I was always the designated driver. I got a bit boy-crazy in high school, but I didn’t party, so I was never the coolest person in class. At the weekends, I wasn’t chilling with friends; I had s*** to do! I still do – I can’t not be busy.”
There was a period, she says, when she needed to “individuate from my mom. She never fought it – her expectations of me were never about her.” So she headed in another direction. “I thought music would be my route, the pop world, but I got into musicals at school and…that was it.” She begged her parents to let her give acting a shot. “They said, Ok, but we’re not going to support you. They made it clear that we grew up privileged, and that it was theirs, not ours.”
The work came quickly. Within months, Hudson was living out of a suitcase, flying across the globe. She was only 21 when her agent called her in a departure lounge and said, “Good morning, Academy Award-nominated actress…”
To this day, her performance as groupie Penny Lane in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous, a semi-autobiographical account of the ’70s music scene, may be her most acclaimed. But she didn’t let it go to her head. “I’d witnessed so many successes and failures with people I grew up with. You can’t gauge success like that.”
The film brought a flurry of work in her twenties, mainly romantic comedies. And she started a family – she gave birth to Ryder at 25, after marrying Robinson in a shamanic ceremony: “It was a lot. My twenties were like a fast track into adulthood. Things calmed down in my thirties… A bit!”
To some, her run of romcoms didn’t fulfill the promise she showed as such a young Oscar nominee. Does she think the genre gets a bad rap? “Not just romcoms, but comedy in general,” she says. “People underestimate it. With drama, you can draw it out, make it more emotional. But with comedy, you have to have perfect chemistry and timing or it won’t be funny. And not everyone can do that.”
As a producer on 2009’s Bride Wars, co-starring Anne Hathaway, she tried to push for a bawdier female humor, but the studios weren’t persuaded: “I was saying, women don’t have to be Pg-13, but the studios didn’t take the risk. So I think romcoms got a bit stale.”
Hudson leaps into conversations, full of opinion and enthusiasm. She roars with laughter and bangs the table. Is she always this happy? “No!” She laughs harder. “I’d be a crazy person if I was happy all the time. Maybe my extroverted nature makes people think I am… And I do love life. But I’ve had times in my life that were intensely not coming from a happy place.”
She won’t go there today, but one can guess: two break-ups with the fathers of her children can’t have been easy, though she’s remained friends with both. What she will say about her joyful attitude to life is that she works at it: there’s a line in Pretty Happy – so-called because that’s how Hudson feels most days – that reads, “Contentment takes discipline.”
“Exercise and meditation improve our moods and keep us healthy,” she explains. “So that’s what I do. I’ve tried all kinds of yoga, but transcendental meditation is the one I always go back to. It’s so simple and quiet.”
Ask her about her challenges in life and she demurs. “Why would I talk about that? I got dealt a really lucky hand, I know that.” Her love life is on the upturn, too: with new boyfriend, Danny Fujikawa – another musician. It’s almost as though she has a type. “I don’t, actually! My type is just whoever I connect with at the time.” Three musicians? “Ok, I’m a musical person – I write music; I sing. So with the people I’m attracted to, there’s often a musical element. Like if I was a mathematician and I met a guy I could talk about equations with all day.” As soon as I saw his abacus… “Hah, exactly!”
Fujikawa, the stepbrother of her best friend Sara, has been a friend for 14 years. They were hiking one day last December, and suddenly Hudson realized. “I was like, ‘Oh… what an amazing…’” She starts fanning herself and laughing. “‘Am I allowed to be attracted to my best friend’s stepbrother?’”
Whether wedding bells may ring, she won’t say. But if they do, she’ll have a hell of a reception. If there’s one thing Hudson knows about, it’s marking milestones and making time for friendships: “My whole personality is to be at the center of maintaining groups and friends.” She’ll rally if a friend – the likes of McCartney, Liv Tyler and Dakota Johnson – is in need, and if there’s something to celebrate, she won’t hesitate. That’s what Pretty Fun is about: “Celebrating your tribe. I’m a real believer in celebration.”
But are we any closer to distilling the secret to her sunny demeanor? One last try: meditation, exercise and…cocktails?
“Hah! Sometimes, sure!”
Marshall is out now
