| Millions tuned in to watch 1960s sketch-comedy show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, but not only because it was funny. Viewers also got to gawk at a go-go dancing Goldie Hawn, who played the ultimate hippie hottie—a bubbly ingenue with big blue eyes and lustrous lashes.Playing the epitome of the dumb blonde, the former ballet dancer and university drop-out used her comedic skills to act the all-round ditz, and we loved her for it.
Unconcerned with being typecast, Goldie giggled her way through her feature film debut, playing a dancer in 1968′s The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band, and as a scatterbrain mistress in Cactus Flower (1969), which earned her both a Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
With her career on the rise, Goldie starred opposite Peter Sellers in 1970 farce There’s a Girl in My Soup, holding her own against the comedy legend. She then showed she wasn’t just a fun babe with a rockin’ bod by impressing critics with her mature performance in drama Butterflies Are Free (1972), in which she portrays a young woman who helps her blind neighbour/lover deal with his past and controlling mother.
It was official: Goldie Hawn was versatile. Also in 1972, the beauty surprised fans yet again by teaming up with country music stars Dolly Parton and Buck Owens to record the album Goldie, which features covers of Parton’s ‘My Blue Tears’ and Joni Mitchell’s ‘Carey’. |
| After returning to her (blonde) roots with 1975 box-office hit Shampoo, Hawn entered a cinematic and personal dry spell. She appeared in a few forgettable flops and got divorced from her husband of seven years, Gus Trikonis. However, soon after Goldie married musician Bill Hudson and gave birth to two children, Oliver and Kate, both of whom are now actors.Goldie’s marriage to Hudson lasted just four years, but by then she’d formed a solid comedy partnership with Chevy Chase, appearing with him in 1978′s Foul Play, where Chase plays a feckless detective tasked to protect Hawn’s character, who is entangled in a murder plot, followed by 1980′s Seems Like Old Times.
Private Benjamin was also released in 1980, and proved to be the film that Goldie needed to launch her back onto the A-list. Hawn is fantastic as a snobby socialite turned army chick, and her entertaining performance earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Hawn also made her debut as an executive producer on Private Benjamin, and she has since produced an additional seven movies.
Then along came lucky bugger Kurt Russell. Even though the two had worked together previously on The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band, they fell in love on the set of 1984′s Swing Shift, and went on to star in the 1987 leadweight comedy, Overboard.
Proof that Goldie could still do scorching (now well into her 40s) came via 1990 action comedy Bird on a Wire, in a scene where a gust of wind lifts Hawn’s skirt to reveal brief briefs and a healthy amount of arse to an appreciative Mel Gibson, who quips: “When did you start wearing underwear?”
No digital trickery was required when Goldie played a woman with a perfect figure following an immortality treatment in 1992 comedy Death Becomes Her, before letting it all hang out as an ageing groupie in 2002′s The Banger Sisters. Passing the sexy on to daughter Kate Hudson. So much for the ‘dumb blonde’. |