Oscar-winning actress Goldie Hawn is holding nothing again.
In a brand new interview with Variety, the star, 77, opens up about a few of the wildest issues she’s skilled as a number one girl in Hollywood — together with being known as a “dumb blonde” by a feminine reporter on the top of the ladies’s liberation motion within the ’70s, regrets round not attending the Oscars ceremony in 1970 when she gained for Cactus Flower, in addition to her salty relationship with disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein.
While reflecting on her early success on the Sixties comedy program Laugh-In — which led to a decades-long profession in movies like The Sugarland Express, Private Benjamin, The First Wives Clubs and extra — Hawn famous how occasions just like the Academy Awards have modified, and never precisely for the higher.
“It used to be elegant,” she says of the Oscars. “I’m not old-fashioned, but sometimes jokes are off-color. And I’m missing reverence. Things have become politicized. I want to see people in awe. I want to see people believing again. I want to see people laughing more in a way that isn’t just at someone else’s expense.”
The similar goes for the way forward for romantic comedies, she stated, noting how “sad” it’s that audiences have seemingly labeled them as “pedestrian and not interesting” when in comparison with fashionable cinema.
Of regrets, she’s had just a few — and stated that one in every of her greatest is that she wasn’t current on the 1970 Oscars the place she was named Best Supporting Actress for her position in Cactus Flower.
“I never got dressed up. I never got to pick up the award,” she stated. “I regret it. It’s something that I look back on now and think, ‘It would have been so great to be able to have done that.’”
Admittedly, she did not even anticipate to win. “I forgot it was on television that night,” she stated. “I woke up to a phone call at like 4 in the morning. And it was a man’s voice and he said, ‘Hey, congratulations, you got it.’ ‘I got what?’ ‘You got the Academy Award for best supporting actress.’”
Raquel Welch accepted the statuette on Hawn’s behalf that night time, citing that Hawn “couldn’t be here because she’s in London filming.” Truth be informed, Hawn had by no means watched footage of her win till just some weeks in the past, whereas touring with this 12 months’s Oscar host, Jimmy Kimmel, to a mutual pal’s celebration.
“[Jimmy] said, ‘Did you ever see the part where you’re being announced by Fred Astaire?’ And I said, ‘Fred Astaire?!’ He’s my idol,” she said. “And I didn’t know he was the one that announced my name. I got emotional when I finally saw it.”
The Nineteen Seventies have been additionally the peak of the ladies’s liberation motion, when feminists labored to advance girls’s equality.
Hawn, who at this level time was leaning into archetypes that had traditionally been reserved for males — taking part in a soccer coach in Wildcats, enlisting within the Army in her Oscar-nominated position in Private Benjamin, amongst others — recollects being shamed for her “flighty persona” by a feminine reporter.
“She said to me, ‘Well, don’t you feel kind of irresponsible for being like a dumb blonde and, you know, playing dumb in a time when women are reaching out to become independent and liberated,’” she remembered saying. “And I looked at her and I said, ‘Oh, but I’m already liberated.’”
Hawn additionally shared that 15 years earlier than Chicago gained Best Picture in 2003, producer Harvey Weinstein had been creating a precursor model, starring Hawn because the murderess Velma Kelly and Madonna as Roxie Hart (roles that went to Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renee Zellweger, respectively, within the 2003 model).
Hawn stated Weinstein was the one to tug the plug on the venture regardless of having their offers in place.
“Harvey basically undermined me and Madonna,” Hawn said. “I said, ‘Don’t f*** with me. Because I know just what you’re doing. We made a deal.'”
Much to her surprise, Weinstein paid Hawn what they had negotiated for her work, even though the project was canned. “You stand up to a bully, and sometimes you win,” she said of the disgraced producer. “I said to him afterwards, ‘You know what the best part of you paying me is? Not the money. You restored my faith in dignity and ethics.’ Little did I know…”
Of course, Weinstein will likely serve the rest of his life in prison after being convicted of rape and accused by multiple women of sexual assault and abuse. “He’s finally living his karma,” said Hawn.
While Hawn said it’s “good” that men like Weinstein and others are being punished for their past sex crimes, she hopes the world can remain “vigilant” when it comes to other areas.
“I think that it’s important to stand vigilant on people’s behavior and really understand when they’re out of line and be able to handle it,” she stated. “But I’m concerned about these areas: Suddenly you don’t have a job. Suddenly you can’t date a woman within the business or you’re going to get fired. They’re canceling books — classic books that no one can read. I don’t like that. There’s mistrust everywhere. So not only is there cancel culture, but there are culture wars. Schools are being politicized. But for the greater good of our children? No one’s really looking at that.”
“There’s a disruption now. Disruptions are good. But imbalance isn’t,” she added. “I hope to get back to some level of sensibility and fairness. So ‘cancel culture.’ The word itself scares me more than anything. It’s rigid, concretized thinking, which is not good. It’s got double edges on it. And who has the right to cancel?”
For the sake of the way forward for comedy, Hawn hopes audiences will proceed to evolve.
“The level of sensitivity is so high that comedians are afraid to tell certain jokes the way they used to,” she stated. “And it’s a little bit of a quandary for comedians; there are issues you may’t say and so forth and so forth. I imply, it’s high-quality. There are sure areas that I agree with. But the extent of sensitivity is unforgiving. That’s not a very good feeling whenever you’re in a inventive mode.”
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