‘Don’t mind me!” Kate Hudson announces as she struts through the studio for our cover shoot wearing a teeny, skintight minidress and a grin. We all joke about how it’s the perfect outfit for the school run and she bounds off in front of the camera where she twirls and dances on the spot, singing to herself and chatting with everyone. Turns out Kate Hudson is rather fun to be around.
Hudson is in town to promote Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, the sequel to the 2019 comedy crime hit Knives Out. It stars a glorious ensemble, including Daniel Craig, Kathryn Hahn, Edward Norton and Janelle Monáe. Hudson steals the show as Birdie, a culturally tone-deaf former fashion magazine editor who routinely gets cancelled for things like impersonating Beyoncé (“It was a tribute”) or assuming sweatshops are shops that sell sweatpants. It’s a big-budget, show-stopping spectacle that will be released in cinemas this week and on Netflix just in time for Christmas. “The script was a joy to read — all the characters are delicious,” Hudson says over Zoom two weeks later. “Birdie got me the most excited. When I heard that Rian [Johnson, the director] wanted me to do it, I was ecstatic. The cherry on top was to work with Daniel Craig, who is wonderful.”
She’s in her LA home wearing a Fabletics (her own brand of athleticwear) hoodie and matching tracksuit trousers. Every other sentence is punctuated with a “you know?” Around her is a cabinet filled with cocktail glasses and booze, a coffee table piled with books and a pink sofa adorned with cushions. She was up at 6.30am marinating chicken. So far so Californian. Over our hour Hudson gushes about her three children, Ryder, 18, Bing, 11, and Rani Rose, 4, and their fathers, how relationships “need work” and about doing night shoots for The Skeleton Key, a gothic supernatural horror film, just four months after having Ryder and having to breast-pump between takes “to keep up milk production. My hormones were going wild.”
Hudson does, however, make it clear when she doesn’t like a question. The Skeleton Key came out in 2005 after she had starred in a slew of romantic films — box-office hits such as How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and Raising Helen, which for many fans are still her best-known movies. Perhaps you wanted to flex a different acting muscle and do something grittier, I ask. “It’s kind of weird when people ask questions like that,” she replies sternly. “I’m not that calculated. I can see why you’d think that, as a journalist. But you just want to make good movies with good people.”
I move onto safer subjects, such as her love of England (she lived here for several years in the Noughties while in a relationship with the Muse frontman Matt Bellamy, Bing’s dad), and her charm comes right back, with her reminiscing about the Holly Bush pub in Hampstead and reeling off recommendations for country hotels I should visit and yoga classes I should try. She is, after all, a pro who has been doing this for more than two decades.
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Hudson, 43, comes from showbiz royalty. Her mother is Goldie Hawn and her stepfather, whom she calls “Pa” or “Gogie” (Hawn is “Gogo”), is Kurt Russell. Hudson’s estranged biological father is the musician Bill Hudson, who called his daughter “spoilt” in his 2011 memoir. Her brother Oliver, 46, is also an actor and co-hosts their podcast, Sibling Revelry. Then there are her three half-brothers, Wyatt Russell, 36, Boston Russell, 42, and Zachary Hudson, 36.
Kurt and Goldie have been together since 1983, famously one of the longest relationships in showbusiness. Hudson has always referred to Kurt as her dad. “He’s an amazing family man who took us on as his own kids, which was very important for Oliver and me,” she says. “Raising kids is not an easy thing to do. You try to raise them well and hope they make good, solid decisions. My parents are really focused on how they raised us. Family was their priority and we always knew that.”
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Hudson and her brothers grew up between LA and Colorado, mansions and movie sets, getting to hang out with Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty. Yet “at the time we didn’t know what a glamorous upbringing was”, she says. She became world-famous at 21, when she played the rock groupie Penny Lane in the critically acclaimed Almost Famous. The role won her an Oscar nomination and she appeared solo on the film’s two posters: one a close-up of her Ray-Ban-covered face, while the other featured her perched half-naked next to a guitar.
Hudson was one of the most successful actresses of the Noughties, with films such as Bride Wars and You, Me and Dupree. She sang and danced her way through five episodes of Glee, playing the ballet teacher Cassandra July, made the rom-com Mother’s Day with Jennifer Aniston in 2016 and earned a Golden Globe nomination for 2021’s Sia-directed Music, in which Hudson played a recovering drug addict who cares for her autistic sister. Last year she was also in a crime series for Apple TV+ and next year stars in another comedy film, Shriver.
“I felt so lucky to be able to have such early success,” she says. “Almost Famous was a blast. We had, like, flip phones. People actually sat and connected with each other on set. It felt intimate.” A Vanity Fair cover story from 2000, when the film was released, refers several times to Hudson’s breasts, something that feels so wrong and uncomfortable to read and write today. I wonder how much sexism Hudson felt exposed to in the industry. “I mean, that’s just systemic,” she says. “It’s not just Hollywood. Everyone has experiences of sexism. What has been interesting for me growing up is that I’ve seen how brutal the outside of the industry is. There’s the inside, then there’s the media and how they play a part and how powerful that is. They kind of build you up to tear you down. They love you one minute, they don’t the next. At that time you’d hear a lot of cruelty, but you also hear a lot of praise, so you get to that point in your life where you just don’t listen to any of it. You just try to do good work and stay focused on your family and the things that matter.” What were people cruel to you about? “I don’t rehash stuff like that.”
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In 2006 she sued the British version of the National Enquirer after it reported she had an eating disorder, describing her as “painfully thin”. “It’s the nature of the beast,” she continues. “If you become an actor you’re going to be scrutinised and criticised. It’s a rollercoaster so you have to really love it. I like that we talk more openly about it now because I think people realise that they should be kinder, but I knew that growing up. I saw how the industry worked and how turbulent it is.”
She credits her upbringing for keeping her sane when countless other stars with such early success went off the rails. “I always wanted to be close to my mum,” she says. “Even during those times of individuation, which I think every young girl goes through with their mother, I still wanted to be close to her. I always needed that conversation, comfort, even when I was off and independent. And I think it’s because she really allowed me to be my own woman. She was never overbearing. There was no expectation of me that I needed to be a certain way. She allowed me to make mistakes and I think [most] parents have a hard time doing that. And my mum is a searcher, always working on herself, always taking accountability when she needs to. She’s a very strong but compassionate person. So, growing up, even the harder moments only brought us together. I only hope I have that with my daughter.”
Goldie and Kurt live close by, as does Oliver, and they see one another all the time. “I can’t leave my mum,” Hudson says. “I have to live less than a mile away from my mother literally everywhere.” Even when she was living in England, which “feels like a second home”, she has memories of hanging out there with her mum at the private members’ club Annabel’s. “Her friend owns it, so she frequented it, and I would end up there with her.”
In 2000 Hudson married Chris Robinson, the lead singer of the rock band the Black Crowes, and they had Ryder in 2004, splitting up in 2007. She went on to date Owen Wilson, Lance Armstrong and the sports star Alex Rodriguez, before becoming engaged to Bellamy in 2011, three months before Bing was born. They broke up in 2014. She and Rani’s father, Danny Fujikawa, a musician, have known each through mutual friends since Hudson was 23. They started dating in 2016 and got engaged last year. “I hope we get married!” she smiles. “We’re not in a hurry. The last thing I need right now is to plan a wedding on top of everything else, but I’m excited about it. Last night he was going through some old footage on his phone of him and Rani and it melted my heart. He’s such a wonderful dad and stepdad.”
● Willow Smith on what she’s learnt from her famous parents
I’m fascinated by Hudson being mother to a toddler, tween and teenager and, as a mother to a toddler myself, what it’s like to have a baby at 26 and another at 38. “It is different,” she says. “I’m definitely more present as a mother now that I’m older. With Ryder, our relationship is so special because I grew up with him. The big learning period of my life and becoming a woman happened as I was being a mother. It was a choice. We wanted to have a baby and it felt instinctual. I was very attached to him and vice versa. I took him everywhere. I didn’t leave him until he was two. I didn’t even really put him in school until he was ten, whereas I’m far more structured with my other kids. When Ryder got older I realised a little more structure might be good for the kid.” Did he have a tutor on set with her? “I mean, not really. Yes, when we really needed it.” She laughs. “Poor Ryder. I was working all the time, his dad was on the road all the time, we were very nomadic.”
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The relationships she has now with her sons’ fathers are lovely. “Ryder is in college and very happy [and, incidentally, dating the actress Iris Apatow]. Chris and I just need to check in once in a while. Matt is so wonderful — I couldn’t have asked for a better co-parent. For me it’s like, you loved this person. That doesn’t just go away, but you can re-establish a different kind of love. You can have an amazing time with an ex-partner because you’re really only focused on the love of your child.”
She is close friends with Bellamy’s wife, Elle, and the two blended families go on holiday together. “It might not look traditional from the outside, but on the inside I feel like we’re killing it,” Hudson says. “The unit that I’ve created with three children with three different fathers is a seriously strong unit, and it’s ours. I’m not interested in forcing some conventional idea of love or marriage. I’d like to be able to grow intimately with my partner for a long time, but I also don’t have rose-coloured glasses on. My goal in life is that I want to feel love and I want to give love, but I’m also practical, so, one day at a time. I work really hard at relationships because I like them. My parents have done an amazing job of continuing that dance.”
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is in select cinemas until Tuesday and released on Netflix on December 23
Hair: @NeilMoodieStudio at Bryant Artists using Pureology. Make-up: Naoko Scintu at the Wall Group using Suqqu. Nails: Lucy Tucker using Clarins Make-up. Thanks to Spring Studios and A-Z Prod
