Kate Hudson

[Erin]

love her love her love her...love them

 

[Polina_sexy]

She´s a great actress!!!!! lovely face

 

[Amélie]

"Milestone!" squeals Kate Hudson. "I feel like I need to call everyone in my family." The momentous occasion is the actress's first postnatal self-insertion into a pair of size 28 jeans (from James, boot cut, with stretch). OK, so she had to get on tiptoes and wiggle the zipper, but it's undeniable: Within ten weeks of delivering her first child, Ryder Russell (a boy), Kate Hudson is almost back to her usual size 27 derriere. This universal scene—what new mother hasn't battled with denim?—takes place at the Universal Studios lot in front of the wardrobe crew for The Skeleton Key, the new movie from Iain Softley that Hudson is due to start filming three months after giving birth. "I'm not worried about my weight," she says. "If the audience is worried about my hair or my weight, it means I'm not doing my job as an actor." While it may be true that the character she will be playing is a working-class hospice worker and not a fashion model, it nevertheless takes no small measure of guts to parade one's distinctly maternal form before Hollywood onlookers. This, one can't help feeling, is a woman with inner resources. In the words of Hudson's friend Juliana DeLeo, a new mom and video producer married to Dean DeLeo of the Stone Temple Pilots, "Kate has such high self-esteem, more than any person I've met—which is rare, especially in Los Angeles, where most of us are pretty self-loathing."
It has, in every sense, been a big year for the 25-year-old. Leaving aside work—her new movie, Raising Helen (in which she does play a skinny fashionista), opens this month—Hudson spent most of 2003 happily ballooning in the Hudson/Hawn tradition (Goldie Hawn, her mother, gained 60 pounds when carrying big brother Oliver 112 pounds to 172 pounds, to be exact. "I've been so happy—big and fat and jolly and laughing with Chris." (Black Crowes singer Chris Robinson, that is, whom she married on New Year's Eve 2000; he's thirteen years older than she.)

It's true: Unlike many actress mothers, Hudson did not inflict a dietary agenda on her unborn son. "Our whole family is very voracious," Hawn says. "We love food. We're passionate about food and taste. But Katie's main concern was that she have a happy baby. She didn't have the preoccupation with self, and that is what I most admire about Kate. She was a joyful mother-to-be." Once Ryder came into the world in early January, Hudson did not remove herself to a Caribbean island to starve in private. She and Chris went out with their baby, like any normal parents; if she paid any heed to the gasps of surprise that greeted sightings of her much heavier self—she bore little resemblance to the sexy starlet of Le Divorce and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days—she gave no sign of it. On the contrary: "I'm really enjoying being bigger," she says. "I've never been voluptuous. I look at it as a role. I gained 60 pounds, and every second of it was so much fun. I wouldn't change it for the world. Banana splits? Forget it."

The charm of Kate Hudson lies in such persistent sunniness. Her cinematic and personal charisma wells up from a seemingly inexhaustible supply of optimism, good humor, and effortless moral balance. As her friend Liv Tyler says, "There's something magical and special about her. She has great luck in her life. She sparkles."

What sets Hudson apart from comparable comic actresses—pretty girls who trade in feminine dazzling smiles and a tomboyish willingness to skid clumsily on stilettos—is a certain bohemian earthiness. She seems at once wilder (remember, she married at age 21 a rocker who made no secret of his druggy past) and yet more grounded (remember, she stayed married). Hudson's the ultimate bohemian bourgeois: permissive yet bossy, artistic yet careerist, laid-back yet ambitious, self-indulgent yet driven.

Banana splits or not, she worked out until she was eight months pregnant ("granted I was one hundred million pounds and almost broke the [Pilates] Reformer") and four weeks after the C-section began aerobic walking under the supervision of Joe Horrigan, the personal trainer hired by Skeleton Key producers to get her into shape, pronto, for her starring role. At six weeks postpartum she started lifting weights three times a week, doing pilates and yoga, and generally shooing away carbs. Everything in moderation and with baby Ryder's interests paramount. Hudson's breast-feeding commitment is so strong that she nurses her son while attending read-throughs. "She never hands her baby off to the help," says DeLeo. "She never used the baby nurse to sleep for ten hours a night." The upshot is a physical and mental fitness that the actress has never known before: "I can run for an hour. I'm in the best shape of my life." Says Tyler, "The thing I admire the most about Kate is that she is living her life the way she wants to live it."

If there's a secret to all this success—which is about attitude as much as anything—it has to do with family. When Hudson was six months pregnant, she and Robinson bought the very house that Hawn bought when she was pregnant with Kate, a thirties two-story spread in Pacific Palisades. It's not a mansion, it's a house, with a lawn at the front made for gamboling kids and an open-plan kitchen with sprawling sofas and scattered baby gear and hippie bric-a-brac (vaguely Balinese and Indian artifacts) that could easily double as the set for a middle-of-the-road family sitcom. Only the framed photographs of Joe Cocker and Jerry Garcia and the band Free suggest the couple's groovy hinterland, which is in fact theirs.

Oh, yes, and the fact that Goldie Hawn drops by to baby-sit when she's in town from Vancouver. (Here's a salient fact: Hawn and Russell, who have never married, moved to Vancouver in order to give their son Wyatt the opportunity to play high school hockey at the highest level.) Thus while Hudson's hair is being dyed in her bathroom for The Skeleton Key (the burnished rich girl's blonde is replaced by a rougher, dirtier hue of straw), Grandma, in chocolate-brown yoga pants and cross-strapped tank, walks around with baby, cooing helplessly. There's an exchange of views about a ruffled Gaultier wrap skirt with polka dots that Hudson has just bought and that Hawn quite by chance owns in white (they agree that the matching utility-belt action is complicated). There's a girly colloquy about makeup: Hudson demonstrates for Hawn her new favorite La Prairie base and concealer (yes, getting that natural creamy glow requires expert application of a full face), and Hawn tries some on her hand and exclaims, "Oh, it looks like Kabuki on me! You're so pale!" to which new mom Hudson says, "I haven't been out of the house for two months."

Suitably ashen-haired, Hudson goes downstairs wearing the Gaultier skirt, a cardigan from Marni, Stella McCartney heels, and a C&C tank with the label sticking out: Mysteriously, neither Mom nor the nanny nor Kate's personal assistant points this out to her. (The assistant, to be fair, is busily phoning in the menu for the private plane flight to New Orleans the following Saturday: in case anybody's interested, vegetable soup, sushi, trays of roast beef and turkey sandwiches, vegetable platter, and a cookie plate.) When he sees the new hair, Robinson falls to his knees and declares, "I love it. Look how skinny you're getting every day, every day."

Hudson is as unfazed as one could be about the burdens of fame and work and motherhood and riches. "We grew up in this life, and we all turned out pretty great. Mom did something right, and she was a busy, busy, busy woman." Hawn has a more nuanced view: "I did not like leaving them when they were little or big. It was never pleasant. You have to have priorities regarding what you will allow to take you away from your child. It's not easy, no matter what work you do." Hudson and Robinson are figuring it out: This summer, she and Ryder are in New Orleans shooting The Skeleton Key while Robinson plays the summer festival circuit with the Allman Brothers and flies back for family weekends. "It's the hardest stage right now," says the actress of her marriage. "But it all comes back to my mom. She always found time for the romance part of it, even when you knew she was tired. It's so easy to say, 'It's about my child.' People think that you can put your sexual life on hold, but you have to find time for it. Without that relationship, our family is broken. My mom really implanted that in me when I was pregnant." Says Hawn, "You have to find time to play together, because life's hard, even if you make a trillion dollars. So you need to pay attention to that."

And apparently Hudson does pay attention to all that, with a kind of old-fashioned deference to gender differences. "Men, at the end of the day, are not more needy, but they have more ego," she says. "If my husband lacked ego, I wouldn't be as attracted to him. Men need to feel desired. And to me, they are. They're yummy. I tell Chris, when we hit the one-year mark as parents, that's when we take a vacation for ourselves." If anyone can crack the nut of being the happy rock-star wife, it may be Hudson. She really enjoys being with the band and letting her husband be the star. "I'm so young," she says. "I still have so much time for really great, complicated characters. I don't feel rushed. If you don't take time off from your career, you become too internalized. You forget to look around. You need to be open, to disappear. That's why I love being on tour so much." Says Juliana DeLeo, "The gypsy style of life is really appealing to Chris and Kate, really freeing for them. Wherever they're together, it's home."

This romantic fondness for upping sticks and dropping out can take a more radical, you might even say Waldenesque form: "Every day I have a moment when I say to Chris, 'Maybe we should cash in. I'll make handmade lotion, and you'll write music and sell it on the Internet.'" Note that even in her fantasies, Hudson has work in mind. Her industriousness—in addition to maternity, matrimony, and acting, she is a budding producer of TV sitcoms—is awesome. "She's a huge knitter," Liv Tyler says. "She knits like a madwoman—huge amazing blankets for her husband and baby. I don't know how she does it all. I can't find time for anything."

Hudson's craft-y blankets are crammed in the drawers of her walk-in closet, and they perfectly match her fashion sensibility. She pulls out her favorite clothes: lacy sweaters from Lainey Keogh, long scrawny knits from Rick Owens ("I live in my Rick Owens"), Matthew Williamson's hand-painted, jeweled shearling jacket. There are deer-hunter hats (Fred Bare) and tweed newsboys (Ralph Lauren); an entire section of Uggs; too many vintage camisoles to count ("things that when I get back to my weight I'll be glad to put on"); much Marni; even more Dries. "I love clothes, and what girl doesn't?" she exclaims. "At the end of the day it's so much fun." The most extraordinary items, such as embroidered velvet coats in scarlet and deep purple from Voyage, were gifts from Robinson. "One of the pluses of marrying a rock star is that they know how to wear clothes." (Her husband has his own walk-in wardrobe filled with Gucci, Henry Duarte, one-off leathers from Lost Art, and a mountain of serapes.) Her friend Stella McCartney, perhaps the world's most expert observer of the successful pop-star coupling, describes Hudson's style thus: "Kate has that hippie chick-meets-rock chick kind of thing. But she also has elements of class that layer on top of all that she does, elements which obviously come from her upbringing and from her own self. So basically she's just a cool chick."

Hudson says of Goldie Hawn: "Growing up I thought my mom was the coolest mom thing on the planet." You can bet that baby Ryder will one day say the same.

"All Together Now" by Sally Singer has been edited for Style.com; the complete story appears in the June 2004 issue of Vogue.

 

[Plumour]

great picutres!
how cute, how sweet, it really does give this warm/home feeling

 

[oanadobre]

She and the baby are gorgeous. But will he ever shave off that beard? I can't even imagine what his face looks like!

 

[sweetjane]

Originally posted by butterfly@May 27th, 2004 - 11:19 pm

she's so CUTE!

does anyone know where that red dress is from?
maybe vogue mentions who its by but i don't have this issue

 

[lunabella]

not much!

 

[Cicciolina]

Sweetjane, the red dress is from Dior - I LOVE that dress too! Wouldn't be available anymore though

 

[PradaP]

I saw her Allure cover for the July issue... yawn

 

[sweetjane]

Originally posted by Cicciolina@Jun 10th, 2004 - 6:32 am
Sweetjane, the red dress is from Dior - I LOVE that dress too! Wouldn't be available anymore though

how heartbreaking!

thanks anyways!

 

[twilight fairy]

SHE IS STUNNING Everything about her is so natural and beautiful and she always has the prettiest dresses.

 

[Dixie]

I'm envious of her hair. It's always in perfect waves.

 

[pineapple]

for some reason she just really annoys me.

 

[liberty33r1b]

i totally agree! totally annoying!!!!!
and i really don't understand the fuss around her!
a) she has no unique, sophisticated style whatsoever (britney spears has more style, and i'm not even talking about madonna here......)
B) sooooo boring: even renee zellweger does it better for me!
c) just because she IS goldie hawns daughter does not make her a good actress. she was thrown into the limelight because of her background, and, of course, she became an actress!
i mean: if my mother was goldie hawn, what do think i would be right now???
give me a break!!

and to say the least: EVERYONE CAN LOOK GOOD IN A DESIGNER DRESS!!! EVERYONE!!! but it doesn't give you style. you either have it or not!!!!
and she definitely hasn't!
(and you remember her recently on the mtv movie awards, chewing on her nails while presenting an award with m. perry??? it was there for anyone to see.....)

 

[scandinavianchic]

Originally posted by liberty33r1b@Jun 14th, 2004 - 1:19 pm

i totally agree! totally annoying!!!!!
and i really don't understand the fuss around her!
a) she has no unique, sophisticated style whatsoever (britney spears has more style, and i'm not even talking about madonna here......)
B) sooooo boring: even renee zellweger does it better for me!
c) just because she IS goldie hawns daughter does not make her a good actress. she was thrown into the limelight because of her background, and, of course, she became an actress!
i mean: if my mother was goldie hawn, what do think i would be right now???
give me a break!!

and to say the least: EVERYONE CAN LOOK GOOD IN A DESIGNER DRESS!!! EVERYONE!!! but it doesn't give you style. you either have it or not!!!!
and she definitely hasn't!
(and you remember her recently on the mtv movie awards, chewing on her nails while presenting an award with m. perry??? it was there for anyone to see.....)

I totally disagree with you! I love her movies, and I think she has her own style opposed to other celebrities!

 

[Kimkhuu]

Originally posted by liberty33r1b@Jun 14th, 2004 - 6:19 am
a) she has no unique, sophisticated style whatsoever (britney spears has more style, and i'm not even talking about madonna here......)

Really !?

I don't agree with you on that point.......

 

[dramatique]

a) she has no unique, sophisticated style whatsoever (britney spears has more style, and i'm not even talking about madonna here......)

Definately disagree with you on this point.

sooooo boring: even renee zellweger does it better for me!

I have to say Renee is gorgeous but her choices are just that: boring. Herrera is the only person who designs for her nowadays and as much as I hate to admit. Zellweger is getting a tad to predictable

just because she IS goldie hawns daughter does not make her a good actress. she was thrown into the limelight because of her background, and, of course, she became an actress!
i mean: if my mother was goldie hawn, what do think i would be right now???

Agreed. But we don't hear much about Goldie's other child: Oliver. Hudson's brother. Also doesn't disproof that Hudson garner's a Oscar nomination for her acting in Almost Famous the role that truly propelled her to fame. True, her film choices leave much to be desired but she is a good actress.

EVERYONE CAN LOOK GOOD IN A DESIGNER DRESS!!! EVERYONE!!!

I don't think so. Seen too many bad looking celebrities to agree with this. Lil Kim anyone?

 

[Kate Moss]

She is really gorgeous, or maybe just pretty. But her mom is also something speciel. I think she looks great!

 

[miry]

heyy everybody Im new!! im from peru
i really ADORE kate hurdson...shes got a really good style..and its just so MUCH glamour !!!!!!!
great actrees too...
one of my faves..

btw,,have u checked out the previews for simple life 2 ?? those miniskirts paris and nicole wore are SO CUTE.. u gotta check that out

 

[cecilie]

kate hudson with her son ryder