Not going overboard with marriage! Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell have been together for more than three decades, but walking down the aisle is still not a priority. The First Wives Club actress opened up about her famous Hollywood romance in Porter magazine’s June 2015 issue.
“A lasting relationship isn’t about marriage. It’s about compatibility and communication. And you both need to want it to work,” Hawn, 69, explains. “If one person does not want it to work, it isn’t going to work. Intention is the key. It’s also about not losing yourself in each other. Being together, two pillars holding up the house and the roof, and being different, not having to agree on everything, learning how to deal with not agreeing. Everything’s a choice.”
Hawn and Russell, 64, met on the set of 1968’s The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band, but didn’t get romantic until 1983’s Swing Shift. Coming from close-knit families is one of the many reasons the twosome first hit it off.
“[Kurt] came from three sisters and a very strong family unit. I came from one sister and two parents and a big family unit. That’s what we care about,” she adds. “We talked about relationships and commonality early on. We had nannies, there’s no doubt about it. We’ve both been working. But we were very present with our children. It’s the same way we grew up. I had a working mother, Kurt did not. My mother was right there.”
Hawn and the Deepwater Horizon actor welcomed son Wyatt in 1986, with Russell becoming the stepdad to Hawn’s older children, Kate and Oliver Hudson, from her marriage to Bill Hudson. Russell and ex-wife Season Hubley also had son Boston in 1980. Wyatt, Kate, and Oliver all caught the acting bug, which Hawn didn’t seem to mind.
“What you prepare your children for is to be able to deal with differences, obstacles, ways of handling uncertainty,” she explains. “The truth is, it doesn’t matter what they would have chosen to do. Every business changes.”
In Porter mag, Hawn — who hasn’t appeared in a film since 2002’s The Banger Sisters — also posed with two of her adorable grandchildren (Oliver’s sons Wilder, 7, and Bodhi, 5), and dished about her views on sexism.
“We have made some strides, there’s no question. The relationship between men and women is definitely changing, but when you think that we only got to vote how many years ago? We’re still dealing with these kinds of paradigms,” she noted. “If you look at racial issues — I’m reading Truman’s autobiography at the moment — they were dealing with the very same situations that we’re dealing with today. It’s human nature to create these problems. Women are trying to find their own power inside relationships, too. You have to ask yourself, is there too much power? Do I hold too much power? Do I have more money than the other person?”
One other female powerhouse trying to do just that is Patricia Arquette. The star gave a stellar speech about women’s rights while accepting the Oscar for her work in Boyhood back in February.
“There is a lot of data to support what she said. A lot,” Hawn told Porter. “Old ways die hard and I think women, in many ways, are still trying to figure out the pathway to being able to have certain things. I think that Katie (Hudson) deals with that on her level. She’s not me. She sees things her way, although we agree on a lot of things. In terms of the business itself, you just have to be smart.”
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