Goldie Hawn Reveals Surprising Secret to 42-Year Relationship With Kurt Russell
Dating traditionalists will find their strategy counterintuitive, but it’s worked wonders for the pair.
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Actress Goldie Hawn, 80, revealed the counterintuitive secret to her longtime partnership with fellow actor Kurt Russell, 74. The Hollywood couple has been together since 1983—an impressive stretch for any relationship, let alone Tinseltown’s notoriously fast-fizzling coupling.
“What makes a relationship work?” host Dan Buettner asked Hawn in a preview for an upcoming episode of The Dan Buettner Podcast.
“Freedom,” the Oscar-winning actress answered. “I really feel this way, and I always have.”
Although the couple has been together since their thirties and co-parents four children, including actors Kate Hudson and Wyatt Russell, their choice to forgo tying the knot remains a topic of conversation.
“Even if we did get married, it wouldn’t make any difference because it’s 42 years now,” Hawn said in the clip, which was shared by People magazine.
Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell at The Goldie Hawn Foundation Celebrates 20th Anniversary Of MindUP Gala, in Beverly Hills, California, 2024.
JC Olivera/Variety via Getty Images
Hawn continued, “I have a relationship with birds. I’m a bird. And you leave the cage door open, I may never fly out. But if you close that door, for my freedom and my independence, I would probably take all my feathers off. It’s a freedom of self. It’s a freedom of basically not melding into somebody else, when you’re copacetic on certain areas, and you have freedom.”
In addition to her independence, Hawn credited her partner’s many positive traits for the pair’s successful partnership, calling him “an amazing person” and lauding his intelligence and acting abilities.
Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell (right) with son Wyatt Russell, grandson Ryder Robinson, and daughter Kate Hudson at Goldie's Love In For Kids, an annual charity event benefitting the Goldie Hawn Foundation, on November 3, 2017.
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“We’re an unbelievably happy family, most of the time. And, I don’t know…there’s a cohesiveness,“ she said. ”Why would I want anybody who is perfect? There is no such thing.”
Hawn and Russell share four children, including actors Kate Hudson, 46, and Oliver Hudson, 49, from Hawn’s marriage to singer Bill Hudson; son Boston Russell, 45, from Kurt’s marriage to actress Season Hubley; and actor Wyatt Russell, 39, the couple’s only child together.
Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn in New York in 1970.
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Physical chemistry, too, plays a role.
“I’m also very sexually attracted to him,” Hawn said. “And that’s important. If you have a long-term sexual relationship, that’s actually really healthy. He’s my sexual object. I find him incredibly handsome to this day.”
Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell during 'The Banger Sisters' Premiere in 2002 in Los Angeles.
Chris Polk/FilmMagic
Hawn and Russell met on the set of Disney’s The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band in 1966, but it took more than a decade for the two of them to get together. A major factor was their age gap at the time: Hawn was 21, while Russell was 16.
In a 2012 interview with BBC Radio 4, Hawn recalled working on the 1960s gig with her future partner.
“I thought he was adorable, but he was much too young,” she said, adding, “Years later, we met up again, and I remembered that I liked him very much when I first met him.”