GOLDIE HAWN & KATE HUDSON
THIS ADORABLE MOTHER-DAUGHTER TEAM LEAN ON EACH OTHER THROUGH LIFE’S JOYS AND SORROWS
Hollywood’s dynamic mother-daughter duo open up about family, fame and what they’ve learned from each other.
When Kate Hudson gave birth to her second child, her mother, Goldie Hawn, took over the delivery room with flowers, takeout pizza and Doritos. Although the actress tried to behave more discreetly when Kate welcomed her third child this fall, she still got in the way. “Once again, she was right in there,” laughs Kate, who delivered daughter Rani Rose on Oct. 2. “I remember the doctor [saying], ‘Goldie, you get a little closer, you might fall in.’ ” Being extremely close comes naturally to Goldie, 73, and her lookalike daughter Kate, 39. The women share an enviable bond that brings them happiness and has sustained them through life’s heartbreaks. “As we grow older together, I can’t ex- press the amount of love, joy, laughter and sadness we share,” Goldie gushes. “She understands me, I understand her. We’re girls. We share everything.”
Kate agrees. “My mom is my great confidante! I pretty much tell her everything,” she confesses. “Look, unfortunately, or fortunately, our family is very open. There’s some things we don’t want to necessarily know about each other, but everything is just out on the table in our family.”
It’s not just the good times that have made Goldie and her daughter so devoted. Kate, one of two children born during Goldie’s marriage to musician Bill Hudson, has been Goldie’s rock through tragedies, like the recent passing of a longtime family friend. “We call each other and we can cry together,” confides the star, who also has two sons, Oliver Hudson, 42, and Wyatt Russell, 32, but admits, “It’s a different relationship [with a daughter]. We can cry on each other’s shoulder and laugh in each other’s faces.”
FAMILY TIES
Kate, for her part, doesn’t just love her mother, she admires her and finds comfort in her presence. “This
the morning, have coffee and chat,” confides Kate, who
sations usually revolve around life
Hollywood. “It’s mother-daughter, not motherbusiness,” adds Goldie.
After Kate,
two sons, Ryder
Robinson, 15, and Bingham Bellamy, 7, confirmed her pregnancy last April, she told her mother first, not surprisingly. “Goldie loves being a grandmother. She went over to Kate’s house and they were both happy and crying,” says a friend. “They are truly connected.”
It hasn’t always been easy for them. Goldie became a mom to Kate and Oliver when she was still young and consumed by her career. She split with the children’s father, Bill, part of the musical Hudson Brothers, in 1982 when Kate was just 3. “Goldie wished she’d spent more quality time with the kids when they were young,” says a friend. “She was so into her movie career that she’d be gone for long periods of time. The children were often raised by nannies.” To make up for it, Goldie eventually started taking the kids with her to film sets. “They were international travelers by the time they hit puberty,” says the pal.
During her childhood, Kate adored her beautiful mother and tried to protect her. “Especially with the outfits my mom would sometimes wear. I would be like, ‘You can’t wear that out!’” recalls Kate. “It was the ’80s, and she always wore tight dresses! Mom was very free!”
OVERBOARD ON LOVE
Goldie never gave up her freedom, but her life changed when she fell in love with Kurt Russell on the set of 1984’s Swing Shift. Over the years, rumors of their “open relationship” raised eyebrows, but the couple, who welcomed their son Wyatt in 1986, stuck together. “Family values are everything,” says Kate, who like her brother Oliver, calls Kurt “Dad.” “I think that’s the glue. Kurt would also say that through everything [he and Goldie] always continued to figure out how to have fun.”
Her mother would add that a strong relationship has a gravity of its own and doesn’t require a legal contract to keep people together. “There’s something psychological about not being married,” says Goldie. “It gives you the freedom to make decisions one way or the other. For me, I chose to stay, Kurt chooses to stay, and we like the choice.”
After 35 years together, Goldie and Kurt remain as committed as any other longtime couple and have no reason to make it legal. “She and Kurt don’t want to jinx their decades of true love,” says a friend. “They are married for all purposes, really. They have no secrets between them but lots of space.”
Kate tried to emulate Goldie and Kurt’s happy union, but she’s seen her share of heartache over the years. In 2007, she and Ryder’s father, musician Chris Robinson, divorced after nearly seven years of marriage. In 2014, she and Matt Bellamy, another musician and the father of her son Bing, also parted ways. “Relationships ending are painful, and you
can choose to carry that or you can choose to reframe it,” opines Kate, who had better luck staying cordial with her boys’ fathers than Goldie did with her ex-husband Bill. “Children learn from their mothers and mothers learn from their children,” Goldie tells Closer.
KATE’S NEW MAN
Kate finally found happiness with baby Rani’s father, Danny Fujikawa, a longtime friend whom she began dating in 2017. “His stepsisters are my best friends and so we have been in the same circle for over a decade,” Kate explains. “We were able to open our hearts to each other to
“The only thing you can do is be a living example for your kids.”
— Goldie
feel so much pure love. It’s been truly incredible!” Like Goldie and Kurt, Kate and Danny don’t seem likely to marry.
Having her mother nearby through this period of change in her life has brought Kate peace and confidence in her choices. “It sounds cheesy, but my favorite thing about my mom is her smell,” says the actress. “I feel like I can smell her right now, you know? There’s this smell about my mom that I love — and her laugh. Those are my top two.”
Goldie, meanwhile, gushes with pride over her fabulous daughter, who is also her best friend. “She’s the greatest,” she says. “And you know what, we mothers earn that. We need to learn when to let our children go at a certain time in life, we can’t be overbearing, we can’t tell them what to do, we don’t own them, we can only love them. I think that works.”
— Reporting by Katie Bruno