Goldie Hawn has built a lucrative career
with her screen persona of a vivacious, giggly, and befuddled naïf. She hit
the big time as one of the regular cast members on the 1960s sketch comedy
show, Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. On the show, she would often break
out into high-pitched. squeaky giggles in the middle of a joke, in the
middle of a joke. Noted equally for her bubbly attitude as for her bikini
and body with funny slogans and designs, she parlayed her bubbly persona
into series of popular film roles in the 1960s and 1970s and won an
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Cactus Flower (1969).
Goldie starred in a string of a successful comedies in the 1970
including Butterflies Are Free (1972), Shampoo (1975),
and Foul Play (1978).She received an Emmy nomination for her TV
production of The Goldie Hawn Special in 1978. Goldie's popularity continued into the 1980s starting with Private
Benjamin (1980) a comedy which not only starred Hawn but was also her
first effort at into producing .and garnered her second Academy
Award nomination, this time for Best Actress. Her last picture of the
1980s was opposite partner Kurt Russell (for the third time) in the 1987
comedy Overboard, a box office disappointment which
questioned her further ability to carry a film, Hawn and Russell soon
became domestic partners and have enjoyed one of Hollywood's longest-lasting
relationships.
However, Goldie's second ex-husband e Bill Hudson with whom she had two
children (actors Oliver and Kate Hudson) wrote a smarmy scathing
tell-all book titled 2 Versions: The
Other Side of Fame and Family, which claimed that Goldie slept
with her Shampoo co-star Warren Beatty and French actor Yves Renier
while they were still married. . He also writes about her alleged affair
with a mysterious Swede named Bruno.. He quotes Goldie as saying, “‘I have
something to tell you,’ Goldie said. ‘I’ve been seeing this guy in Sweden.
His name is Bruno, and he’s coming to the States on Monday. He’s going to
stay here for a couple of weeks before I leave to start shooting the movie
in Denver with George Segal." Bill then claims that Goldie came back to him
explaining, "You’re my soul mate. I know it in my heart. It’s just that I’ve
always believed in an open marriage.”
After a few more tepid
films, Goldie hit her stride again as the aging, alcoholic actress
Elise Elliot in the financially and critically successful The First Wives
Club (1995), She has made few films since, but scored another hit in The
Banger Sisters (2002).
To celebrate Goldie's birthday we suggest viewing a DVD of Foul Play
and enjoying this imaginatively and punny-named recipe. |