The Golden Girl

Will her candor here about sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll tarnish Kate Hudson's glow? No way.

By David Hochman

"Narcissism is your worst enemy as an actor. If you can't laugh at yourself, you're through."

Kate Hudson was 3 1/2 when she first realized her life was different. Her mother, actress Goldie Hawn, had recently started dating actor Kurt Russell, and he took the family out to a Moroccan restaurant in Hollywood to celebrate Hawn's 37th birthday. Afterward, Russell tried eluding a swarm of photographers by sneaking the family out a back entrance. It didn't work. "Ten paparazzi guys were waiting for us," Hudson recalls. "I remember running screaming to the car. I was terrified, because I didn't know what these people wanted."

Twenty years later, Hudson is still trying to figure it out. In the two years since her Oscar-nominated performance in "Almost Famous" made Hudson almost ubiquitous, the 23-year-old actress has been reckoning with even more flashbulbs, thanks in part to her own gossip-worthy relationship with rock-star husband Chris Robinson, lead singer of the Black Crowes. And now, after taking a year off to enjoy her new marriage and, yes, escape the media, Hudson is ratcheting up her visibility again with a slate of high-profile projects -- a romance here, a drama there -- kicking off with "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days", a sunny midwinter comedy that opens next Friday. In it, Hudson plays a feisty magazine journalist who attempts to dump a man (Matthew McConaughey) as research for a column she's writing.

Hopping out of her SUV for a 9 a.m. movie shoot in San Pedro, Calif., the actress isn't wearing makeup, her long hair is twirled up like a bird's nest, and she's anything but glamorous in her work boots, sweatpants and boyish denim jacket. Not that she's completely without vanity. "Don't look," she says by way of introduction. "I have a big honkin' pimple."

Blemishes aside, Hudson is one of the freshest faces to have emerged from Hollywood in recent years. "Kate's at a really interesting place in her career," says Glenn Kenny, film critic for "Premiere" magazine. "Clearly, she has the kind of beguiling appeal and versatile talent that could make her another 'America's sweetheart.' If she's smart, she can have a Julia Roberts-type career. But she can just as easily make bad choices and fade away."

Smart, serious, substantive. Those aren't necessarily the first words that come to mind when meeting Hudson inside her diva-size trailer as she pops off her jacket and lights a stick of incense. But they seem to come up, almost defensively, when friends talk to reporters about her. Take this description from Rob Reiner, the director of "Loosely Based on a True Love Story", the comedy Hudson is shooting this particular day: "At this stage in her life and career, Kate compares with her mother, but I think she's even more serious-minded. Kate thinks about things in a very deep way. Yes, she's likable. She's got sexuality. She can do comedy, but she has substance."

Getting a laugh, of course, matters for Hudson, whose next three films are all comedies: "How to Lose a Guy"; then "Le Divorce" with Naomi Watts, due out this summer; and the Rob Reiner movie in the fall. Curling up her waif-thin body on a couch, Hudson says How attracted her because "it was different from 99% of the romantic comedies I was reading. It was actually funny!"

Even with occasional box-office blunders like last year's forgettable "Four Feathers", Hudson seems poised for takeoff. She has managed to sidestep standard teen flicks in favor of intelligent fare like Robert Altman's "Dr. T & The Women" (2000). Her role as a rock groupie in "Almost Famous" garnered her critical and popular attention.

It certainly helps that she has good Hollywood role models -- and genes. Her mother won an Oscar at age 23 and has navigated a career from ingénue to Hollywood power broker. Not to mention that she's still a hottie as she approaches 60.

Hudson, who says she got her first gig, a 1996 guest spot on TV's "Party of Five, without her parents' assistance, laughs when asked how often she and her mother talk. "Usually no more than five times a day," she says. "We talk about everything."

Hudson's biological father is Bill Hudson, the helmet-haired musician from the 1970s comedy troupe the Hudson Brothers. He split with Hawn when Kate was a baby. "It's weird not to have had my father around," says Hudson, who has reconciled with her dad in recent years, "but things sometimes go sour, and you just have to deal with it."

Hudson always has considered Russell her father (she calls him "Pa"). She insists that his and her mother's unofficial status never bothered her. "To me, they were always as good as married," she says. "Pa gave Mom a ring and basically vowed in front of all of us that he wasn't going anywhere. That was important to us."

Hudson's own boldfaced relationship, sealed with a Chiclet-sized diamond on her wedding finger, requires a few declarations, too, especially when it comes to sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. "Sex is always tempting, but always with my husband," giggles Hudson, who married Robinson, 36, on New Year's Eve 2000 at Hawn and Russell's Aspen, Colo., home. Rock 'n' roll "is a constant. Music is playing everywhere in our lives, all the time."

When the topic turns to drugs, Hudson gets more ... well ... serious. "I don't know if people really want to know how I feel about drugs," she says, her voice softening. "I'm not such a stickler. I believe you can choose to live your life any way you want."

That's probably a sound philosophy for her, because Robinson has practically become the poster child for legalizing marijuana. "Everybody knows he's a pot smoker," says Hudson, who also admits to having inhaled, although she says it's not her thing. "That's not news. Here's a guy who's graced the cover of "High Times". But as far as all the heavy drugs and all the things that go on in that lifestyle, it's all left our life."

As she wraps up the interview, the young starlet sounds wry, almost jaded, after a lifetime under the Hollywood glare, with its endless tales of on-set affairs, short-lived marriages, drugs, flops or all of the above. Hudson says she's ready. "What I learned was that none of this really matters," she says, letting loose her movie-star hair from the bobby pins. "When you're on your deathbed, you [won't be] thinking about box-office numbers or who your co-star was. You'll think about your family, about the decisions you make, about the people you love."

Seriously.

Los Angeles-based David Hochman writes about entertainment and travel.

Photograph by Kwaku Alston for USA WEEKEND. Hair by Kathryn Blondell, Milton Agency. Makeup by Ronnie Specter, ArtMix. Styling by George Kotsiopoulos. Clothing: Dress on cover by Y & Kei.