Kate Hudson - Biography

Name: Kate Hudson

Born: 19 April 1979 (Age: 30)

Where: Los Angeles, California USA

Height: 5' 6"

Awards: Won 1 Golden Globe, 1 Oscar and 1 BAFTA Nomination

It's always hard for youngsters to escape the shadow of a famous parent and find individual success. Harder still in Hollywood where entry to the A-List is so brutally restricted. So what price would have been put on Kate Hudson to make it, given that she had not one famous parent, but three? Born to the Oscar-winning actress Goldie Hawn and Bill Hudson, a hit-making musician and TV star, she was then raised by Hawn and the action hero Kurt Russell. The chances of matching any one of these were slim, yet Hudson rose to the challenge, being Oscar-nominated herself at the age of 21, testing herself in a wide variety of projects, and becoming a headline star before she hit 30.

She was born Kate Garry Hudson on the 19th of April, 1979, at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles. As said, she was born of famous stock. Her father was William Louis Hudson, from Portland, Oregon, one third of the renowned band the Hudson Brothers, the others being Brett and Mark. They were originally named Salerno, their parents having come to America from the Amalfi coast of Italy, the town of Salerno being known as the site of the world's first university of medicine and for being Italy's capital during WW2. The boys would thus speak Italian at home. Having passed through various incarnations in the Sixties and early Seventies, the three brothers had signed to Decca then to Elton John's Rocket label (where they'd been produced by Elton's song-writing partner Bernie Taupin), without much success. Then, in 1974, they'd hit big with the single So You Are A Star, enjoying several more smash singles over the next couple of years. They toured with The Osmonds and sang back-up for David Cassidy but, as it turned out, they'd achieve more success with their TV appearances than their music. 1974 would see them star in their own TV variety show, being a summer replacement for the Sonny And Cher Show on Wednesday nights. Their zany humour, which had them dubbed the musical Marx Brothers, would quickly lead to a Saturday morning slot with the Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show, opening with the boys storming around Banana Splits-style in a psychedelic ice cream van. Though their Beatles-ish pop would feature heavily, it was the silly jokes and madcap pratfalling that won the audiences, as well as the introduction of the comedy god Rod Hull with his infamous Emu. By 1978, the lads had a new show, Bonkers!, a bizarre sketch show produced in Britain and co-hosted by Bob Monkhouse, playing it straight under the brothers' terrible abuse ("Don't call me Monkey").

Then, these shows having pretty much wrecked their musical career, no one being able to take their songs seriously anymore, they concentrated heavily on acting, appearing in such shows as The Love Boat and even their own movie, 1983's Hysterical, a zany zombie flick which they co-wrote.

. The Hudson Brothers were real all-rounders. They'd appear on the cover of teen mags, denim shirts open to the waist, jeans tight and bouffants puffy. Loved by youngsters for their advanced silliness, it was no surprise when the eldest of them, Bill, met and fell for another wacky child of the counter culture, Goldie Hawn. She was born in Silver Spring, Maryland, to concert violinist Rut Hawn (a descendant of Edward Rutledge, the youngest man to sign the Declaration of Independence) and Laura Steinhoff, a dance school owner of Jewish and Hungarian origin. A graduate of Cincinatti's Conservatory of Music, for many years Rut would conduct the orchestra for the radio and TV broadcasts of Arthur Godfrey, known to the public as The Old Redhead. Through the Forties and beyond, Godfrey would be known as a discoverer of new talent, giving breaks to Patsy Cline, Tony Bennett and Lenny Bruce (though he'd reject Elvis Presley) and taking his orchestra to several presidential inaugurations. His voice was so comfortingly paternal that President Eisenhower would ask him to record a public service announcement in case of nuclear war. He was also something of a political pioneer in that he was not afraid to hire black and, even more controversially, mixed acts. This was very much in keeping with the Hawn family's liberal leanings.

Goldie was running her own ballet school by the age of 19. She took a college drama course, left to become a professional dancer and, throughout 1967 and 1968, had a recurring role in Carl Reiner's sitcom Good Morning, World, a job that led to a breakthrough as a ditzy blonde on Rowan And Martin's Laugh-In, the original quick-fire sketch series, for which she'd be twice Emmy-nominated. From here her career was meteoric. She'd make her big screen debut in 1968 with Disney's The One And Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (alongside Walter Brennan and fellow youngsters Lesley Ann Warren and Kurt Russell), then the next year win an Oscar for her performance in Cactus Flower with Walter Matthau and Ingrid Bergman. Throughout the Seventies she'd star in a string of high profile movies - There's A Girl In My Soup, Sugarland Express, Shampoo, The Duchess And The Dirtwater Fox, Foul Play, then would produce and star in her own pet project, Private Benjamin, for which she'd be Oscar-nominated again. Already twice -married, she'd wed Bill Hudson in 1976, at the height of their dual fame, and would bear first son Oliver, then daughter Kate, the kids thus being born into mighty success. The pressure would quickly tell on their parents, though, Bill and Goldie splitting in 1979, soon after Kate's birth.

With Bill moving on to marry Cindy Williams (Shirley in Laverne And Shirley), a union that gave Kate a half-brother in Zachary and a half-sister in Emily, Goldie would raise her kids alone. For a while, that is. When Kate was 3, Goldie would come to film Swing Shift, where American women would discover their independence on the production lines when their men went off to WW2. One co-star would be Kurt Russell, with whom she'd appeared in her very first picture. Now they became lovers, then partners, so yet more power and fame poured into the Hawn household, as Russell's career had seriously taken off. As a 6-year-old kid, Russell had appeared in the TV series Tenderfoot. In 1963, he'd played an urchin who'd kicked Elvis in It Happened At The World's Fair. He'd then starred in the cowboy series The Travels Of Jamie McPheeters, going west on a wagon train led by Charles Bronson. Throughout the Sixties he'd appeared in all the big shows - The Virginian, Gilligan's Island, The Man From UNCLE, The Fugitive, Lost In Space - and did the same in the Seventies, turning up in the likes of The High Chaparral, Harry-O and Hawaii Five-O. That decade also saw him enjoy a short career as a minor league baseball player, a career promoted by his father, Bing Russell, co-owner of the El Paso Sun Kings and the Portland Mavericks. Bing was also something of an actor, having had bit parts in such classics as Kiss Me Deadly, Gunfight At The OK Corral, Rio Bravo, Last Train From Gun Hill and The Magnificent Seven. He, too, had appeared in all the big shows of the Sixties and Seventies - Rawhide, The Untouchables, Ironside, I Dream Of Jeannie, The Rockford Files, Streets Of San Francisco, the lot. He'd also found a degree of recognition when for ten years playing the sheriff in Bonanza. Come 1979, having earlier been turned down for the role of Han Solo in Star Wars, Kurt broke through when taking the title role in John Carpenter's Elvis, a film that would give him an Emmy nomination, a wife (he'd marry Season Hubley, who'd played his on-screen wife Priscilla) and a major collaborator in Carpenter. With the maverick director he'd enjoy huge and lasting cult success with Escape From New York and The Thing, films that would boost his reputation and give him such opportunities as 1983's Silkwood, for which he'd be Golden Globe-nominated. Now with Goldie Hawn, he'd bring young Kate another brother of sorts, young Boston having been born to Russell and Season Hubley in 1980. Thus Boston, Oliver and Kate would all be raised together, with Goldie Hawn as ma and Kurt Russell as pa. Another brother, Wyatt, would come along in 1986.

. Young Kate would not see much of her real father, or of her maternal grandfather, Rut Hawn dying in 1982. She'd see her grandma Laura, though, and would be raised as a non-practising Jew with Buddhist leanings. She'd also get to know granddad Bing Russell, a big, popular and hugely successful character.

With the Portland Mavericks, Bing had decided to keep a big roster so older players could continue to play even though they were past their prime (the Mavericks' try-outs in June thus became legendary). He'd have no corporate sponsorship in the ballpark and appointed both the first female general manager in baseball and the first Asian American manager. His efforts and attitude brought the Mavericks the highest attendance in minor league history.

. So Kate was raised with can-do people, people used to success. She'd of course spend a lot of time on-set, Hawn and Russell taking it in turns to make movies, and was thus constantly surrounded by the great and the good of Hollywood. Her mum and dad were Tinseltown's golden couple, a world famous comedienne and her action-hero beau. They were good-looking, too, Goldie in 1985 posing for the cover of Playboy at the age of 39, and an interesting pair politically in that Hawn was a renowned Democrat and Russell a laissez-faire libertarian (in 1989 he'd actually be best man at the wedding of rock'n'roll survivalist Ted Nugent). Thus young Kate would have as playgrounds the sets of some of the biggest movies of the Eighties and Nineties. She'd be there when Goldie and Kurt teamed up for Overboard and when they starred alongside Mel Gibson in Tequila Sunrise and Bird On A Wire respectively. She'd see her mother score big hits with Housesitter, Death Becomes Her and First Wives' Club, and Russell rise to great heights with Tango And Cash, Unlawful Entry and Tombstone. She'd also see them endure quiet periods, Hawn slowing down considerably after 1996, and catastrophe, Russell bombing with Stargate, clawing his way back with Breakdown, then plummeting yet further with Soldier.

It would have been easy for the kids to become spoiled under these extraordinary circumstances, flitting between LA and the family home in Aspen, holidaying in Hawaii, being chased by paparazzi, waving to the cheering crowds, hob-nobbing with the likes of Mel Gibson, Bruce Willis, Meryl Streep, Sylvester Stallone and Michelle Pfeiffer while the cash rolled in - Russell on his own taking $7 million for Stargate, $10 million for Escape From LA and $12 million for Soldier. Yet both Hawn and Russell were keen to have their children appreciate the value of earning their treats. Of course they had more than most, but less than they might have had. More important was that the kids were given a solid example of a successful life and, always in contact with talented people working hard under pressure, they quickly came to understand the dedication necessary and were keen to get going. From a very young age Kate and her brothers would try to impress their parents with little skits, Kate also belting out songs from Annie. By the age of 7 she was acting as stand-in for Brandy Gold who was playing Hawn's daughter in Wildcats. By 5th Grade she'd be set on becoming a dancer, winning a talent show for her routine to Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation.

At 10 she'd try out for a TV sitcom and win a part, though Hawn, who'd allowed her to audition only as experience, would refuse to let her take it. Instead she'd enrol Kate in classes at the Santa Monica Playhouse. More learning, more earning.

. Come the age of 16, Kate thought she was ready. Filled with teenage brio and already confident in her abilities, she was keen to get to work. Maybe she was too confident, playing up a little. Her mother certainly thought so and, against Kate's wishes, decided she needed a stint at the Williamstown Theatre Festival to get her back on track. The festival had been founded in 1954 and run until 1989 by the notoriously demanding Nikos Psacharopoulos. A teacher at Yale and New York's Circle In The Square, Psacharopoulos would bring big stars to Williamstown and, using students and free young talent, would put on huge production that were not affordable elsewhere. Classics would be re-enlivened, new plays introduced, many productions moving on to success in New York. Running between July and August, right in the north-west corner of Massachusetts, its kudos was high.

With Psacharopoulos as mentor and slavedriver, and despite summer stock collapsing in most other regions, Williamstown would become the leading summer training camp in America. Around 70 apprentices, usually aged between 17 and 22, would be chosen each year, on the basis of a resume, an essay and a letter of recommendation. Another hundred kids would be taken on as interns and assistants. On arrival, apprentices would perform two one-minute monologues and would then be set to work. Some would get the plum jobs as extras in the big productions, others would perform in one-acts and skits in the town's cafes and churches, rehearsing in the middle of the night. All apprentices were expected to pick litter and cigarette butts up from the lawns in front of the theatres, they'd mop the stages, set up props, operate the spotlights on the smaller stages, and help the stars dress and memorize their lines. As part of the 11-week Apprentice Workshop (earlier apprentices including Sigourney Weaver, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Christopher Reeve), Kate would attend courses in voice, acting and movement, she'd present scenes in progress and attend seminars with guest and resident artists concerning acting, design, directing and playwriting. She'd also have a go in the theatre shops, the publicity department, the box office, admin and backstage production, basically learning the workings of a professional theatre.

The year before Kate's arrival in 1995, Williamstown had been awash with big names. Edward Hermann, Eli Wallach, Christophers Walken and Reeve, Julie Harris, Karen Allen, Janes Curtin and Krakowski, Blythe Danner and Mary Tyler Moore had all been there. The year after she left, Joanne Woodward would direct Rocket To The Moon, while onstage would be Kate Burton, F Murray Abraham, Hope Davis, Marisa Tomei, Patricia Clarkson, Olympia Dukakis and Austin Pendleton.

1995 would not be quite so starry, but would still have a powerful line-up, Juliet Mills appearing in Alan Ayckbourn's Time Of My Life, Maxwell Caulfield starring as Chance Wayne in Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird Of Youth, and the ensemble also performing Noel Coward's Present Laughter. For Kate it was an excellent grounding, the hard work bringing her swiftly back to earth (as her mother had expected) but also inspiring her to continue.

. Her thespian education would be further promoted when she now enrolled at the Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences in Santa Monica. Taking around a thousand students at approximately $30,000 a year, Crossroads was a progressive private establishment that would include in its list of alumni Jack Black, Gwyneth Paltrow, Zooey Deschanel and Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Kate's brother Oliver was another attendee. Here students would address teachers by their first names and classrooms would not be numbered but named after such pioneers as Einstein, Mead and Neruda. There'd be a digital arts media lab, a modern language lab, a dance studio, art studio, art gallery, screening room, theatre and music performance space, the school placing special emphasis on the arts. Like Williamstown, it would provide Kate with a fine all-round education.

Graduating in 1997, Kate would win a place at university but turn it down in favour of getting straight to work. Immediately she'd sign up for a Tommy Hilfiger jeans campaign aimed at younger consumers, featuring the children of celebrities and going under the tag-line "It's in the jeans". Jesse Wood, son of Rolling Stones guitarist Ron, would feature, as would Steven Seagal's son Kentaro. When, later that year, Kate crossed the country on a promotional bus-tour, she'd be joined by Jackson Browne's son Ethan, Quincy Jones' daughter Kidada, and Mark Ronson, son of a band manager and New York socialite, and later a famous DJ in his own right.

All the while she'd been building towards launching a film career. She'd even performed a successful audition for Kurt Russell's 1996 effort Escape From LA, winning the part of the president's daughter, though she'd eventually turned down the role, simply wanting the experience of trying out. Her first onscreen appearance would thus be in an episode of the TV series Party Of Five, where five young siblings would attempt to fend for themselves once their parents are killed, facing money problems, teen crises and even cancer. Scott Wolf, Neve Campbell and Jennifer Love Hewitt would feature heavily, with Hudson appearing in the penultimate episode of Season 2, playing a TV station employee who flirts with Campbell's boyfriend, played by Michael Goorjian. The next year there'd be more TV with an episode of EZ Streets, a high-class show concerning the parallel lives of detective Ken Olin and ex-con Jason Gedrick, both linked to crime lord Joe Pantoliano, its pilot being written and directed by future Oscar-winner Paul Haggis.

Dealing with gangs, drugs, betrayal, prostitution and murder, it was gritty stuff, and interesting in that it dealt with its topics from the point-of-view of each of the three main characters. However, despite good reviews, it was canned before its tenth episode, the episode in which Hudson was to have played a vital character.

. By then she'd already moved on to her first movie, Ricochet River, based on the novel by Robin Cody. Set in an Oregon high school, this would see her as an artistic, open-minded senior desperate to escape her small logging town. While she remains there, though, she gets involved in a love triangle involving the school quarterback and a daring Native American kid suffering racial prejudice. As debuts go, it was a strong one, Hudson outshining the rest of the young cast, and extra interest being added by a cameo from Ken Kesey.

Her second effort, also in 1998, would be far more interesting, if only for its soon-to-be-stellar cast. This was Desert Blue, also featuring John Heard, Peter Sarsgaard and youngsters Casey Affleck, Christina Ricci and Brendan Sexton III. A slacker comedy drama, the movie was set in the nowhere desert town of Baxter, population 87, its only points of interest being a half-built and abandoned water park and a giant model ice cream cone. In drives Heard, a busy man on a road trip with his daughter Hudson, hoping to bond with her but, as she's a successful TV starlet desperate to get back to LA for an important audition, it's not going well. To make matters worse, a lorry crashes nearby, the driver getting sprayed with a secret ingredient he's carrying to the local cola factory and dying. Now the town's quarantined by an FBI team led by a drunk and aggressive Michael Ironside, and Hudson's trapped. Already arrogant and surly, she's now immensely pissed off that she must share time with the local kids, including Affleck's drunk and stoned bike racer, his girlfriend Ricci who's set on blowing up the town and, eventually, herself, and Sexton, the son of the brains behind the water park. Quickly, though, Hudson finds herself drawn to these characters, understands the pain and drama of their situations, and especially bonds with Sexton as he seeks to relaunch the park and discover the truth behind his father's death. Though purposefully quirky, it was certainly watchable as this dull town is revealed to be wholly bizarre and agreeably mayhemic, and Hudson was excellent as a jumped-up wannabe learning the true value of her values. She'd also briefly date Brendan Sexton III.

Hudson's only release of 1999 would be the excellent ensemble piece 200 Cigarettes, also featuring Casey Affleck and Christina Ricci, as well as Martha Plimpton, Ben Affleck, Paul Rudd, Jay Mohr, David Chappelle and Janeane Garofalo. This film would follow a succession of characters as they made their way to Plimpton's party on New Year's Eve, 1981.

Feisty suburban girls, depressed writers, hunky barmen, fashion victims, street punks, all of them hooking up, splitting up, getting lost, trying to get laid and have a good time while Plimpton waits for them at her apartment, gradually and hilariously going mad. Hudson would play a sweet girl who's lost her virginity the night before to Mohr's suave actor. Now she's in love with him but proves herself to be so scatty, clumsy and indecisive he just wants to get rid of her. However, his ego boosted by the revelation that he's her first, he keeps the date going, taking her to a bar where she accidentally spills a drink over the pool table and smashes a light with her cue, then to an Indian restaurant where she knocks over a trolley of food and bites into a vicious chilli. He's growing to like her but she, looking for decency, is ever more annoyed by his self-centredness, eventually dumping him on the street - just after she's slipped over and got doggie-do smeared down the back of her coat. Of course everyone makes the party and everyone, for better or worse, hooks up. It was another excellent performance by Hudson, revealing a comic talent akin to her mother's, at first cute and clingy then ever more outraged by Mohr's egotism, her makeup becoming ever more tear-streaked and her world crashing down around her - often literally.

. The year 2000 would prove to be a monumental success for Hudson. January would see her next picture - the superb comedy About Adam - open at Sundance (though it would not be granted a proper release till 2001). Here Hudson would play a waitress and singer at a Dublin restaurant. One night she spots the outrageously good-looking Stuart Townsend and, noticing his shyness, she chats him up. After a cute courtship she proposes to him, via the restaurant microphone, while all her family are present, and this is the point from which the movie continually flashes back to reveal Townsend's relationships with Hudson's bookish sister, Frances O'Connor, her unhappily married sister Charlotte Bradley, and even her young brother. Filled with fine performances, it was a genuinely interesting rom-com, twisted, charming and funny, with Hudson truly convincing as an Irish colleen - flirty, pushy, strong and guilt-ridden. She even pulled off a credible accent.

Less enjoyable would be Gossip, an overly slick thriller with absurd settings and a painfully contrived conclusion. Here Lena Headey and Norman Reedus would share a ridiculously funky multi-level flat with James Marsden, a rich kid rejected by his family and living on a trust fund. At one of the cool clubs they frequent, they come up with a way to pass teacher Eric Bogosian's latest test - they'll release a snippet of gossip about someone and record its spread. Their target will be Hudson, a posh girl from old money who won't put out for the guys. Marsden spots her drunk and making out with boyfriend Joshua Jackson.

She passes out, Jackson leaves, but Marsden and his friends claim they had sex, leading to rape charges and a host of skeletons tumbling from closets as the gossip goes out of control and Marsden's past relationship with Hudson is revealed. It was a silly and smug film, but Hudson escaped intact, beginning prissy and arrogant, then being shocked into sullenness by what she believes was rape, and finally dosed up with pills and booze as she freaks out and fights with Marsden.

. Her big winner of the year would be Cameron Crowe's semi-autobiographical Almost Famous. Here Patrick Fugit would play a 15-year-old wannabe rock journalist who wangles himself a commission from Rolling Stone and a place on the tour bus of the up-and-coming Stillwater. Here he befriends the band's guitarist, Billy Crudup, and Hudson's top groupie, Penny Lane - though she righteously claims to be something infinitely more noble. Indeed she is in love with the married Crudup, as Fugit is soon in love with her. Now we follow the band through the onset of chart success and the ego wars that ensue. We see Fugit's coming-of-age and Hudson's love turn to dust, as she turned in a performance that was charming and moving enough to earn her a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination. She'd certainly made the most of her good fortune. Originally the part of Penny Lane was to be played by Sarah Polley but, resolutely independent in her thinking, Polley had decided to instead make The Law Of Enclosures. Hudson, who was signed to play Fugit's older sister, who inspires the boy with her record collection and her desire to escape a humdrum life and become an air stewardess, begged Crowe for a chance to play Penny and eventually convinced him, her original part being taken by Zooey Deschanel. While cutting the movie, Crowe was sensible enough to realise that Hudson was the film's real star and so edited his film around her. It would also be Hudson who'd dominate the movie's posters. Suddenly, so very quickly, she was a star (two years later her mother would follow her into groupiehood with The Banger Sisters).

And she was confident, daring to replace Kevin Spacey on Saturday Night Live when he was held up by the filming of K-PAX. During her monologue, as she briefly plugged Almost Famous, she was interrupted by Will Ferrell and others pretending to be the children of other stars of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, none of whom have become successful. Shooing them off, Hudson would take off her dress to reveal a bikini marked with the words Radiohead Is Here, in honour of the band about to play. In later sketches, Ferrell and Molly Shannon would play Hudson's parents, mortified when she appears naked on TV, then Hudson would appear as Drew Barrymore, being interviewed by Ferrell's James Lipton and making Barrymore out to be an outrageous luvvie.

Then there'd be a Japanese version of Laverne And Shirley (Shirley of course being Hudson's stepmother), and a sketch where Hudson, having crashed out of cookery school, is living in the basement of Jimmy Fallon, and Rachel Dratch and is desperate to get rid of them as she has Nomar Garciaparra of the Boston Red Sox coming over. It was a great success, with Hudson fearless in mocking herself and her family.

. Her final release of a prolific year would be Robert Altman's Dr T & The Women, a film which would place her in a prestigious female cast including Helen Hunt, Laura Dern, Shelley Long, Liv Tyler (a friend from back at Crossroads) and Farrah Fawcett. Here Richard Gere would play a Dallas gynaecologist constantly surrounded by women - his patients, his staff, his daughters, his sister-in-law Dern and her two young daughters. He loves them, indeed he considers them sacred and wishes to provide for them, but his life begins to unravel when his wife Fawcett slips into a second childhood, he begins an affair with independent golf coach Hunt and his daughter Hudson's impending high-society wedding is threatened by the arrival of Tyler, her former lover. Though the film was accused of misogyny for its portrayal of women as remorselessly chattering, needy and rapacious, Dr T & The Women actually called into question the attitude of Gere's character, his desire for control, albeit benevolent control. And once again Hudson pulled off a dramatic role, at first haughty and selfish, flouncing around Tiffany's, ignoring her sister Tara Reid and failing to notice her mother's sorry decline, then becoming more human as she recognises Tyler's pain at her marriage and is forced to make a choice. She also sharpened her comedy in scenes where, having just joined the renowned Dallas Cowboys' cheerleaders, she makes a mess of their dance routines and is sacked for bumming off to chat on her mobile.

Hudson was certainly on a high, both in her professional and personal life. On the 31st of December, 2000, she'd be married to Chris Robinson, lead singer with The Black Crowes. Having split up with Elijah Blue Allman, son of Greg Allman and Cher, she'd met Robinson earlier in 2000 and moved in with him within four days, the couple being wed in Snowmass, near Aspen, at a small(ish) ceremony witnessed by close family friends like Michael Douglas and Sally Field. Twelve years her senior, Robinson was a rock star of long standing, The Black Crowes' album Shake Your Money Maker, sold on the back of hit singles like Hard To Handle and Jealous Again, was a huge hit in 1990 and 1991 and the band had enjoyed massive success throughout the Nineties, eventually selling over 20 million albums. But Robinson was no ordinary rocker. Righteously angry and deeply concerned with artistic integrity, he'd managed to get the group thrown off a tour with ZZ Top for his sarcastic onstage comments about the tour's commercialism.

He was thus wholly in line with the Hawn and Russell family tradition of risking public opprobrium for one's beliefs.

. Once married, Hudson would take a year off to show her commitment to her new husband, supporting him as he went straight back into the studio to record The Black Crowes' sixth studio album, Lions. She'd then join him on the Brotherly Love tour of 2001, when the Crowes would cross America with Oasis and Spacehog, all three bands featuring musical brothers (Spacehog's singer Royston Langdon was then going out with her friend and recent onscreen lover Liv Tyler). For two years Hudson and Robinson would live in New York, then move to Los Angeles, where Hudson would buy her old family home. When pregnant with Kate, her mother had bought a place formerly owned by the director James Whale in Pacific Palisades and the family had lived there till Kate was twelve. Now, twelve years later, Hudson would buy it back and begin her own family there, in 2004 bearing a son, Ryder Russell Robinson, his middle name given as a mark of respect to the man who raised her.

Before this, Hudson had resumed her film career and suffered both huge success and disastrous failure. Her only appearance of 2001 would be an uncredited showing in the short The Cutting Room where all the characters cut out of movies, plays and books would live together in a trailer park. Her next movie role might have been in Sam Raimi's mega-hit Spider-Man, but she turned down the role of Mary Jane Wilson (a role then taken by Kirsten Dunst) in order to star in Shekhar Kapur's remake of The Four Feathers. Set in the late 1800s, this would see Heath Ledger as an army officer ordered to the Sudan to fight the Mahdi's hordes. However, he's so in love with Hudson's Ethne that he refuses to leave her, resigning his commission instead. Of course, this smacks of cowardice, it's just not done, and he's given the white feathers of the title by his four closest friends, including his beloved Ethne. So, to win back his reputation and, maybe, Hudson's respect, he takes off for eastern Africa on his own and endures almighty hardship as he saves accusing friends Michael Sheen and Wes Bentley from the bloody aftermath of a British defeat. Though the film was epic in scale, it lacked true gravitas and was horribly constructed, leaping from episode to episode with little building of mood or tension. Still, the performances were uniformly excellent. Hudson held her plummy accent well and, initially reserved but joyful in the presence of Ledger, had a touch of the great Joan Greenwood about her.

The Four Feathers took a battering at the box-office, but Hudson would bounce back immediately with the rom-com How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days. Here she'd work on Bebe Neuwirth's top fashion mag, writing an ongoing How To column.

Commissioned to write a feature on how to annoy a man so much he leaves you, she picks up Matthew McConaughey, not realising that he's an ad-man who's made a bet with his employers and will win a lucrative campaign if he can get a girl to fall in love with him in that same ten day period. Thus the stage is set. She tortures him, allowing her dog to wet on his pool-table, wrecking his poker game and calling his penis Princess Sophia, while he must swallow it all. True love will come later. Hudson had already revealed her charm and comic abilities in About Adam and 200 Cigarettes. Now, backed by the equally charming McConaughey, she really let rip, the movie becoming a $100 million hit. So popular was it, though, that Hudson would now be seen by millions as a rom-com actress. She would have to work hard and balance carefully to ensure she'd be seen as more skilled than that.

. Both of Hudson's other releases of 2003 would be interesting failures. The first of these was Alex & Emma, directed by Rob Reiner (Hudson's mother having previously worked for Reiner's father Carl), where dangerously indebted author Luke Wilson would have thirty days to write a novel in order to claim $100,000 from his publishers, thus allowing him to pay off loan sharks threatening to kill him. To speed up his progress he hires Hudson as his stenographer and the story cuts between their building relationship and the tale he's writing and changing as he goes along. In the story, set Gatsby-style in the 1920s, voracious divorcee Sophie Marceau would plan to marry rich David Paymer but be tempted by young Wilson, thus setting up a love triangle between Marceau, Wilson and Marceau's young nanny Hudson. As the story changes, so does the nanny, Hudson playing the character as Swedish, German, American and Latino. It was reasonably good fun, but claims that it was based on Dostoevsky's writing of The Gambler made it seem a little silly. Hudson's next film, Le Divorce, ought to have been more highbrow, being directed by James Ivory and written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, but suffered badly from some unnecessarily zany sub-plots. The movie would see Naomi Watts as an American poet in Paris, pregnant and dumped by her French partner just as her younger sister Hudson comes from California to visit. Hudson gets a job as secretary to writer Glenn Close and forms a relationship with the 55-year-old uncle of her sister's ex, a right-wing intellectual and TV star. She becomes his mistress, accepting his gifts and lessons in Gallic sophistication. She grows up but inside herself she's still a girl out for a good time, as is evinced by her relationship with a scruffy French kid who skivvies for Close, and her childish knockabouts with her brother when the whole family comes over from the States. It was an odd film. In examining the differences between French and American cultures it made both look ridiculous, then bombed itself out by introducing Matthew Modine's simmering psycho.

Hudson's sole release of 2004 would be Raising Helen, directed by Garry Marshall, who'd not only directed Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell in Overboard but was also the brother of Penny Marshall, star of Laverne And Shirley, featuring Hudson's stepmother Cindy Williams. Raising Helen would see Hudson back in the world of New York fashion, this time working in a modelling agency run by Helen Mirren. She's a high-powered young lady, working 24/7 and is thus mightily disturbed when sister Felicity Huffman is killed and she's given custody of three small kids. Now her life changes drastically as she loses her job, moves her new family to Queens, takes work in a car dealership and bears the outrage of her other sister, Joan Cusack, a super-efficient mum who cannot believe Hudson has been entrusted with the children. And, of course, there's romance, a thing growing between Hudson and John Corbett, pastor at the Lutheran school the kids attend. It was very conventional rom-com stuff, but lacked the hi-octane charm of How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days.

. Having spent much of 2004 on the road with her husband, Hudson would be more adventurous with her 2005 release, The Skeleton Key. A genuinely smart thriller that had been delayed for a full year by director Iain Softley so Hudson could star, this would see her as a nurse in New Orleans. Upset by casual attitudes to health care at the hospital where she works, she takes a job at a mansion out in the country, helping Gena Rowlands care for her husband John Hurt, who's suffered a stroke and can neither move nor speak. Quickly the atmosphere darkens as she feels Hurt is trying to warn her of impending peril, she discovers a clutch of voodoo paraphernalia in a locked attic and she learns of the house's history of magic and lynching. Hudson was particularly effective in this, her first straight role in some time, coming over as a properly modern heroine rather than a victimised screamer. Her character was not simply there to be chased, rather to resourcefully attempt to rescue Hurt, all the while tortured by her earlier failure to care for her estranged father.

With a family to attend to - Chris Robinson having recorded and toured two solo albums since 2002, and then reformed The Black Crowes - Hudson was now sticking strictly to one film a year. 2006's offering would be You, Me And Dupree, a wild comedy where she marries Matt Dillon, who works for her property developer father Michael Douglas, enjoys an idyllic honeymoon and then, upon their return, finds that Dillon has let his reprobate buddy Owen Wilson crash at their house. Much of the comedy would be played out by the other characters - Wilson's advanced slobbery, a disapproving Douglas's suggestions that Dillon have a vasectomy, Dillon's increasingly paranoid struggles with jealousy and his attempts to leave his laddish life behind. But Hudson, a daddy's girl, loving newly-wed and prim primary school teacher, backed them all well with convincing reactions.

Also featuring Peter Sarsgaard, a co-star in Desert Blue seven years earlier, it would be another big hit.

. Though her career was on track, having recently succeeded with both a thriller and a straight role in a comedy, Hudson's personal life would now enter a period of confusion. Rumours that she had become close to Owen Wilson during the filming of You, Me And Dupree were strenuously denied, nevertheless her marriage to Chris Robinson was drawing to a close. Robinson would file for divorce in November 2006, citing irreconcilable differences, the divorce coming through in 2007. Hudson would subsequently date Wilson, then comedian Dax Shepard, and then champion cyclist Lance Armstrong, who'd earlier appeared in a dream sequence in You, Me And Dupree. There'd also be an on-off relationship with Eric Lindros, renowned ice hockey player with the Philadelphia Flyers, the New York Rangers and the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Professionally, she was also expanding her range. 2005 had seen her, along with Kurt Russell and her brother Oliver, as executive producer of 14 Hours, starring Rick Schroder and Kris Kristofferson, where a Houston hospital had to be evacuated during a violent storm. In 2007, having taken a business course, she'd get together with stylist David Balaii, who'd done her hair for years, to launch David Balaii for Wild Aid, a range of natural hair products. Also that year, she'd make her directorial debut with Cutlass, a short film sponsored by Glamour magazine and starring poppa Kurt, Virginia Madsen, Dakota Fanning, Kristin Stewart and Chevy Chase, who'd co-starred with her mother in Foul Play nearly thirty years before. It would begin with Madsen being asked by daughter Fanning for a guitar she cannot afford, then would flash back to 1979 as Madsen remembers asking her own father Russell to help her buy the 1976 Oldsmobile Cutlass of the title. It was a well-made piece, sweet, moving and comical, particularly the look on Russell's face when car dealer Chase says he's open to negotiation on the price of $4800 and his daughter offers $4750.

Onscreen, 2008 would see Hudson attempting to relaunch her career after the sabbatical caused by her divorce. Playing to her more obvious strengths, she'd start up with two romances. The first of these would be Fool's Gold, a reunion with Matthew McConaughey that replaced comedy with action. Here McConaughey would be a diver for treasure off the coast of Florida. Thinking he's found a Spanish galleon, he manages to get ex Hudson and her millionaire boss Donald Sutherland involved, and the three of them must race against time to beat McConaughey's former mentor Ray Winstone to the prize. Also in the hunt would be a gangster rapper intending to rip off the bunch of them. Pacey and fun, it would do reasonable business without matching the success of How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days.

Fool's Gold would be followed by My Best Friend's Girl, where Dane Cook would be hired by dumped men to take their ex-girlfriends on a date from hell, thus sending the young ladies scurrying back to their former partners. Now he takes on the case of his kindly, nerdish roomie Jason Biggs, who's in a "just friends" relationship with co-worker Hudson. Cook then picks up Hudson, but all his attempts to gross her out come to nothing as she outdoes him in terms of drinking and general boorishness, using him simply for a one-night stand. Naturally, he falls for her and risks betraying his best friend Biggs. Following this would come Bride Wars, where Hudson and Anne Hathaway would be bosom buddies, each overjoyed that the other has found true love and plans to marry. Their joy, though, turns sour when they double-book their weddings and neither will change the date or venue, and arguments turn to outright sabotage as they sneakily wreck each other's hair, dress, makeup, everything.

Hudson's most prestigious release of 2009 would be Nine, directed by Rob Marshall, whose Chicago had won a Best Film Oscar. Based on the book by Arthur L Kopit, Nine had first become a stage musical, opening on Broadway in 1982 with Raul Julia in the lead and scooping five Tonys. It had then reopened in 2003 with Antonio Banderas upfront, winning a further two Tonys. In the movie Daniel Day-Lewis would take the lead as the film director entering a midlife crisis and blocked for ideas on his next movie. His marriage to Marion Cotillard is failing, his mistress Penelope Cruz has had enough of him, indeed (much like Richard Gere in Dr T & The Women) he's being pressured by all the women in his life, including producer Judi Dench, film star and muse Nicole Kidman, and Hudson, playing an uptight and hostile film critic. Beginning to crack up, he's forced to face up to his life, looking back to the women in his past and his sexual initiation at the age of nine.

Given her starry forebears, Kate Hudson has done well to forge her own path, like her mother revealing herself to be both a fine comedienne and a skilled dramatic actress. And, given her ambition, it seems likely she will proceed to cement her position in Hollywood as one of the most popular and charming young actresses of her generation.

Dominic Wills