Goldie Hawn

Goldie Jeanne Hawn (born November 21, 1945) is an American actress.

Hawn began taking ballet and tap dance lessons at the age of three and danced in the corps de ballet of the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo production of The Nutcracker in 1955.

Noted equally for her chipper attitude as for her bikini-attired and painted body, Hawn was seen as a 1960s "It" girl.

Her 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.

She made her stage debut in 1964, playing Juliet in a Virginia Shakespeare Festival production of Romeo and Juliet.

In 1964, Hawn ran and taught in a ballet school, having dropped out of American University where she was majoring in drama.

She 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 and at the Peppermint Box in New Jersey.

Hawn moved to California to dance in a show at Melodyland Theatre, a theater in the round across from Disneyland, joining the chorus of Pal Joey and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying during the June 14 to September 1966 season.

Hawn began her acting career as a cast member of the short-lived sitcom 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.

She rose to fame on the NBC sketch comedy program Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1968–1970), before going on to receive the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Cactus Flower (1969).

Her next role, which brought her to international attention, was also as a dumb blonde, as one of the regular cast members on the 1968–1973 sketch comedy show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In.

Hawn often broke out into high-pitched giggles in the middle of a joke, then delivered a polished performance a moment after.

Hawn made her 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 fiancée.

The same year, she appeared in The Spring Thing, a television special hosted by Bobbie Gentry and Noel Harrison.

Other guests were Meredith MacRae, Irwin C. Watson, Rod McKuen, Shirley Bassey and Harpers Bizarre.

After Hawn's Academy Award win, her film career took off.

Hawn appeared in such films as There's a Girl in My Soup (1970), Butterflies Are Free (1972), The Sugarland Express (1974), Shampoo (1975), Foul Play (1978), Seems Like Old Times (1980), and Private Benjamin (1980), for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for playing the title role.

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).

She also hosted two television specials: Pure Goldie in 1971 and The Goldie Hawn Special in 1978.

In 1972, Hawn recorded and released a solo country LP for Warner Brothers, titled Goldie.

She continued proving herself in the dramatic league in 1974 with the satirical dramas The Girl from Petrovka and Steven Spielberg's theatrical debut The Sugarland Express.

She then co-starred in Hal Ashby's classic satire Shampoo (1975).

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 romantic comedy western 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, 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 primetime Emmy.

Four months later the film Foul Play (with Chevy Chase), was released and became a box office smash, reviving Hawn's film career.

The plot centered around an innocent woman in San Francisco who becomes mixed up in an assassination plot.

Hawn's next film, Mario Monicelli's Lovers and Liars (1979), was a box office bomb.

Hawn is the mother of actors Oliver Hudson, Kate Hudson and Wyatt Russell, and has been in a relationship with Kurt Russell since 1983.

She later starred in Overboard (1987), Bird on a Wire (1990), Death Becomes Her (1992), Housesitter (1992), The First Wives Club (1996), The Out-of-Towners (1999), and The Banger Sisters (2002).

In 2003, she founded The Hawn Foundation, which educates underprivileged children.

Hawn was born in Washington, D.C. to Laura (née Steinhoff), a jewelry shop/dance school owner, and Edward Rutledge Hawn, a musician and conductor who was a descendent of Edward Rutledge, the youngest signer of the Declaration of Independence.

She was named after her mother's aunt.

She has one sister, entertainment publicist Patti Hawn; their brother, Edward Jr., died in infancy before Patti was conceived.

The girls were unaware of their deceased brother's existence growing up.

Her father was a Presbyterian of German and English descent.

Her mother was Jewish, the daughter of immigrants from Hungary.

Hawn was raised Jewish in Takoma Park, Maryland, and attended Montgomery Blair High School in nearby Silver Spring, Maryland.

Hawn made her return to film with roles in Snatched (2017), The Christmas Chronicles (2018), and The Christmas Chronicles 2 (2020).